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Transcendence Quotes

Browse 433 quotes about Transcendence.

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Transcendence Quotes

“Whether you are aware of them or not, whether you recognize them as spiritual or not, you probably have had the experiences of silence, or transcendence, or the Divine-a few seconds, a few minutes that seem out of time; a moment when the ordinary looks beautiful, glowing; a deep sense of being at peace, feeling happy for no reason. When these experiences come...believe in them. They reflect your true nature.”

BelieveLooksReasonMomentsFeelingsSeemsBeautifulHappinessSpiritualSilenceMinutesDivineOrdinaryExperienceNo ReasonSecondsTranscendenceGlowingTrue NatureBeing At PeaceFeeling Happy
Author:Ravi Shankar
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“An awkward consequence of heightening experience when one is inexperienced, of self-transcendence when one has not much world to lose, is that afterward one cannot be sure that one was somewhere or had newly experienced anything. If you aren't much in the world, how do you know you are "out of this world"?”

IfsKnowsWorldSelfLosesThis WorldConsequenceDo You KnowAwkwardTranscendence
Book:Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
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“Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person.”

IfsWayFeelsMindHumansHeartPersonsWholeHelpingCertainFoundRealizingHuman BeingsAbilityCompassionPrinciplesDisciplineCapacityAthleteLifestyleBehaveBoardsDancerRitualHeart And MindTranscendence
Author:Karen Armstrong
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“Either the material order is the whole of being, wherein all transcendence is an illusion, or it is the phenomenal surface - mysterious, beautiful, terrible, harsh, and haunting - of a world of living spirits.... One should... be able to recognize that it is only the latter view that has ever had the power - over centuries and in every realm of human accomplishment - to summon desire beyond the boring limits marked by mortality, to endow the will with constancy and purpose, and to shape imagination towards ends that should not be possible within the narrow economies of the flesh.”

WorldShouldHumansEndsWholeAbleBeautifulSpiritDesirePurposeOrderImaginationViewsEconomyCenturyMaterialsTerribleShapesLimitsIllusionBoringSurfaceFleshMysteriousAccomplishmentRealmsLatterMortalityHarshHauntingTranscendencePhenomenalConstancy
Author:David Bentley Hart
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“It doesn't necessarily matter if I'm onstage or not. I just find the communal experience of a rock concert, or any type of music performance, achieves a kind of transcendence that I associate with spirituality. It's the closest thing to what I think people expect church to be like. Or maybe just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldKindMatterSpiritualityUnderstandingLosesChurchAchieveRocksTypePerformancesBiggerRealizationConcertsBe YouClosestAssociatesTranscendenceLosing YourselfRock ConcertsSomething Bigger Than Yourself
Author:Jeff Tweedy
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“Materialism is not fundamentally an economic problem, but a cultural one... a spiritual issue. It runs to the depths of our souls, and, for this reason, needs to be understood less in terms of budgets or fiscal cycles and more in terms of where we locate the sacred, of where we search for meaning and transcendence, and of how we think about justice, equality, and the future of our world.”

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Author:Robert Wuthnow
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“Classical music is at odds with contemporary culture precisely because of its insistence on the tension between the bodily and intellectual, the material and the spiritual, the thinglike and its transcendence in thought. A culture that is merely sensuous and that denies the activity of the mind within sensuous materials risks becoming pornographic.”

MindSpiritualCultureRiskMaterialsBecomingActivityMusic IsIntellectualDenyContemporaryTensionOddsTranscendenceClassical MusicInsistenceSensuous
Author:Julian Johnson
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“No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.”

IfsShouldHardNaturalChanceSimpleStudyOur LivesGoes OnExerciseSentencesLeapBreaking DownTranscendenceAccuracyFugue
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to "black out" or "forget" various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a "constant Consciousness" or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.”

SelfStatesDreamSpiritIndividualBlackSleepForgetConsciousnessPathAwarenessInfiniteConstantUnionsVariousCeaseRealmsFiniteTranscendenceDeep SleepAll State
Book:The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
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“Of course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)”

WritingBelieveKindSelfCoursesIndividualNovelPossibilitySuperiorsFollyHeroicHumankindOscarsTranscendenceGrandeurPrevailingLoneWildeAda
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
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“An improv artist's best instrument is their ability keep their antennae clean so they're able to receive what I call the connection to creativity. It's the thing that you see in any amazing moment that any human being is performing. Whether it's watching Michael Jordan navigating through all these attackers and then suddenly rising up and putting the ball in the most amazing way, or watching an actor on stage playing Shakespeare, but not thinking about the actor anymore or the stage or you or the chair, any of these kinds of moments of transcendence.”

ThinkingWayHumansKindMomentsAbleArtistActorsHuman BeingsAbilityCreativityStageConnectionsBallsInstrumentsCleanPerformingRisingChairsTranscendenceJordanMost AmazingRising Up
Author:Reggie Watts
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“I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.”

ThinkingWorldShouldIdeasFactsEyeHeavenAttentionMysteryCreationSceneEternalConceptsMiracleTranscendenceMisreading
Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“...being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

GivingHumansPersonsSelfReasonCausesSidesHuman BeingsSimpleForgetEffectsMissingAimStriveOneselfEncountersBeing HumanTranscendenceSelf ActualizationSearch For MeaningSide EffectsMans Search For MeaningActualization
Book:Man's Search for Meaning: A Young Adult Edition
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“I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty stories," in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; "upbeat" stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We're grown ups now.”

KnowsMatterStoriesProblemSeemsAbleSubjectsGoes OnPleaseJokesWittyOccasionsDepressingComplaintsTranscendenceSubject MatterResoluteUpbeat
Author:Tobias Wolff
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“To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)”

WayTwoJoyUniverseLeftSoundImaginationMemoriesDarkResponseObviousInsightBlissMysticismMelancholyEcstasyDistractionSaneIrrationalIdleSymptomsTranscendenceMundaneHeresyHysteriaElevationDeviationMedusaSardonic
Author:Thomas Ligotti
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