The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

I believe that the greatest form of prayer is praise to God.

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts.

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Men know not the gold which lies in the mine of Christ Jesus, or surely they would dig in it night and day. They have not yet discovered the pearl of great price, or they would have sold their all to buy the field wherein it lies.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

I serve God.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

On the subject of literary genres, I’ve always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I’d love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.

The ‚kingdom of Heaven‘ is a condition of the heart – not something that comes ‚upon the earth‘ or ‚after death.‘

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Don’t matter how much money you got, there’s only two kinds of people: there’s saved people and there’s lost people.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

Start your week off right by getting back to what is really important – honoring God.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

In the divine milieu, all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them. There they concentrate, little by little, all that is purest and most attractive in them without loss and without danger of subsequent corruption.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

From an eternal perspective, the only death that is truly premature is the death of one who is not prepared to meet God.

Where love is, there God is also.

God always takes the simplest way.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

There is not a separate God for each person. There is one universal intelligence flowing through all of us.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

Prayer is simply talking to God like a friend and should be the easiest thing we do each day.

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Pray, and let God worry.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

The most effective prayers are usually the simple prayers.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

We should never let material things get ahead of God or become so important in our lives that we can’t walk away from them if He tells us to. Anything you own that has a hold on you is a problem.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child’s love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

I was definitely very much a country boy.

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.