Spiritual Longing Quotes

Though I do not believe that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.

Trying to fill the God-sized hole in our hearts with things other than God is like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles.

I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

The continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.

Thou hidden love of God, whose height, Whose depth unfathomed no man knows, I see from far thy beauteous light, Only I sigh for thy repose.

I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn. The Soul calls from within me: 'You, ignorant of the way of Love, set Me free.'

How terrible the need for God.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.

Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people's throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing - not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends - nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God.

From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.

There is some kiss we want with your whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell. And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling.

Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

When you yearn for God with intensity, He will come to you.

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately, when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by.