Evelyn Underhill

Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhillwas an English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist known for her numerous works on religion and spiritual practice, in particular Christian mysticism...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth6 December 1875
Evelyn Underhill quotes about
spiritual self world
As the social self can only be developed by contact with society, so the spiritual self can only be developed by contact with the spiritual world.
christian believe self
But so many Christians are like deaf people at a concert. They study the programme carefully, believe every statement make in it, speak respectfully of the quality of the music, but only really hear a phrase now and again. So they have no notion at all of the mighty symphony which fills the universe, to which our lives are destined to make their tiny contribution, and which is the self-expression of the Eternal God.
real self world
It is immediately apparent, however, that this sense-world, this seemingly real external universe - though it may be useful and valid in other respects - cannot be the external world, but only the Self's projected picture of it ... The evidence of the senses, then, cannot be accepted as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality; useful servants, they are dangerous guides.
call giving obeying opportunity teach wants
Do not be scrupulous and think it selfish. You are obeying God's call and giving Him the opportunity to teach you what He wants you to know.
affairs concerned fail forgetting interest patient respond towards
Towards my husband, I often fail to show interest in his affairs and amusements, not rousing myself to respond when I'm tired or concerned with other things, forgetting he is very patient with me.
fall men grace
Man's will and God's grace rise and fall together
sheep perception wool
As to the most prudent logicians might venture to deduce from a skein of wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which transcends the reproductive powers of your loom.
dark ideas heaven
I have an idea heaven will be both absolutely happy and absolutely dark, to protect us from the blaze of God.
artist environmental eternal-love
In the created world around us we see the Eternal Artist, Eternal Love at work.
ordinary belief individual
No metaphysician has yet shaken the ordinary individual's belief in his own existence. The uncertainties only begin for most of us when we ask what else is.
spiritual real humility
though humility and acknowledgement of one's real failings is good, the gratuitous eating of worms not put before us by God does not nourish our souls a bit - merely in fact upsets the spiritual tummy.
blood religion cold
religion, like beauty, cannot be experienced in cold blood.
ideas voice house
The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction - not merely the idea - that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.
spiritual prayer effectiveness
If we ask of the saints how they achieved spiritual effectiveness, they are only able to reply that, insofar as they did it themselves, they did it by love and prayer.