Evelyn Underhill Quotes (1875-1941)

“We have descended into the garden and caught 300 slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and squalid in gardening. It makes it so like life.”

“Adoration is caring for God above all else. Charity is the outward swing of prayer towards all the world...embracing and caring for all worldly interests in God’s name.”

“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.”

“When love has carried us above and beyond all things, Into the Divine Dark, We receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, Enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, If it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, And an intuition of Eternity?”

“Francis must rank with those creative personalities to which all the deepest developments of Christian consciousness are due.”

“The redeeming character of Franciscan enthusiasm-it's ability to change, brace and expand the most unlikely spirits and impel them to exacting discipline and selfless work-are fully shown in her.”

“Kabir belongs to that small group of supreme mystics amongst whom St. Augustine, Ruysbroeck, and the Sufi poet Jalalu'ddin Rumi are perhaps the chief who have achieved that which we might call the synthetic vision of God. These have resolved the perpetual opposition between the personal and impersonal, the transcendent and immanent, static and dynamic aspects of the Divine Nature; between the Absolute of philosophy and the "sure true Friend" of devotional religion. They have done this, not by taking these apparently incompatible concepts one after the other; but by ascending to a height of spiritual intuition at which they are, as Ruysbroeck said, "melted and merged in the Unity," and perceived as the completing opposites of a perfect Whole.”

“One of the greatest and most interesting Italian mystical poets: Jacopone da Todi, the typical singer of the Franciscan movement, the first writer of philosophic religious poetry, and perhaps the most picturesque figure in the history of early Italian literature...this vigorous missionary and subtle philosopher: this poet, by turns crude satirist, ardent lover, and profound contemplative, who can sink to the level of the popular hymnal and rise above that of St. John of the Cross...a hard and avaricious lawyer, converted in middle life by crushing domestic sorrow, who renounces the world, accepts Franciscan poverty, in its most drastic sense, and becomes like brother Juniper a "fool for Christ"...A rich and complete human experience, a fully-developed physical, emotional and intellectual life, was the foundation from which Jacopone climbed up to those heights where he had communion with the Eternal Order and satisfied at last his craving for perfection. Thither he carried a warmth of human feeling, a passionate energy, a romantic fervour, which represent the spiritualization of qualities developed not in the cloister but in the world.”

“"It is excellent news that you found that you had really come out strongly and self committingly for Traditional, Institutional Sacramental, Religion."”