100 Quotes About Pantheism

I consider a dream like I consider a shadow, ” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a rock. A dream is real – if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a dream – but less real than a thing. That’s what being real is like. Unknown

It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the vital spirituality of hope and increase that exist in the body and soul of nescient childhood. Caeiro’s work is a dawn that wakes us up and quickens us; a more that material, more than anti-spiritual dawn. It’s an abstract effect, pure vacuum, nothingness. . Unknown

She’s a manner of speaking. Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves. There are new flowers, new green leaves. There are other beautiful days. Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real. Alberto Caeiro

To love is to think. And I almost forget to feel only from thinking about her. I don’t know what I want at all, even from her, and I don’t think about anything but her. I have a great animated distraction. When I want to meet her, I almost feel like not meeting her, So I don’t have to leave her afterwards. And I prefer thinking about her, because it’s like I’m afraid of her. I don’t know what I want at all, and I don’t want to know what I want. All I want to do is think about her. I’m asking nothing of nobody, not even her, except to think. Alberto Caeiro

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, And Spring came the day after tomorrow, I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow. If that’s its time, when else should it come? I like it that everything is real and everything is right; And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it. And so, if I die now, I die peacefully Because everything is real and everything is right. Alberto Caeiro

I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read. Alberto Caeiro

And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything. Who knows if I’ll be dead the day after tomorrow? If I’m dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrow Will be another thunderstorm than if I hadn’t died. Of course I know thunderstorms don’t fall because I see them, But if I weren’t in the world, The world would be different –There would be me the less –And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm. No matter what happens, what’s falling is what’ll be falling when it falls.(7/10/1930). Alberto Caeiro

It’s stranger than every strangeness And the dreams of all the poets And the thoughts of all the philosophers, That things are really what they seem to be And there’s nothing to understand. Alberto Caeiro

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset. But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset? Alberto Caeiro

I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing, And I look at flowers and I smile.. I don’t know if they understand me Or if I understand them, But I know the truth is in them and in me And in our common divinity Of letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleep And not have dreams in our sleep. Alberto Caeiro

Live, you say, in the present; Live only in the present. But I don’t want the present, I want reality; I want things that exist, not time that measures them. What is the present? It’s something relative to the past and the future. It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing. I only want reality, things without the present. I don’t want to include time in my scheme. I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things. I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present. I shouldn’t even treat them as real. I should treat them as nothing. I should see them, only see them; See them till I can’t think about them. See them without time, without space, To see, dispensing with everything but what you see. And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science. . Alberto Caeiro

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others! He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs, And isn’t cured from the outside, Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink, Or a trunk not having iron bands! There being injustice is like there being death. Alberto Caeiro

I don’t always feel what I know I should feel. My thought crosses the river I swim very slowly Because the suit men made it wear weighs it down. Alberto Caeiro

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on; And the road didn’t become more beautiful or even more ugly. That’s human action on the outside world. We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And the sun is always punctual every day.(5/7/14) Alberto Caeiro

There are no roses in my yard: what wind brought you? But I suddenly come from far away. I was sick for a moment. No wind whatsoever brought you now. Now you’re here. What you were isn’t you, or else the whole rose would be here. Alberto Caeiro

I saw that there is no Nature, That Nature doesn’t exist, That there are hills, valleys, plains, That there are trees, flowers, weeds, That there are rivers and stones, But there is not a whole these belong to, That a real and true wholeness Is a sickness of our ideas. Alberto Caeiro

I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.(6/20/1919) Alberto Caeiro

Everything’s different from us. That’s why everything exists. Alberto Caeiro

If science wants to be truthful, What science is more truthful than the science of things without science? I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lying Has a reality so real even my back feels it. I don’t need reason – I have shoulderblades. Alberto Caeiro

I was born subject like others to errors and defects, But never to the error of wanting to understand too much, Never to the error of wanting to understand only with the intellect.. Never to the defect of demanding of the WorldThat it be anything that’s not the World. Alberto Caeiro

Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field There passes for a moment the figure of a man. His steps go with “him” in the same reality, But I look at him and them, and they’re two things: The “man” goes walking with his ideas, false and foreign, And his steps go with the ancient system that makes legs walk. I see him from a distance without any opinion at all. How perfect that he is in him what he is – his body, His true reality which doesn’t have desires or hopes, But muscles and the sure and impersonal way of using them. . Alberto Caeiro

The amorous shepherd has lost his staff, And his sheep are straying on the hillside, And he didn’t even play the flute he brought to play because he was thinking so much. No one came to him or went away. He never found his staff again. Others, cursing at him, gathered his sheep for him. No one had loved him, in the end. When he got up from the hillside and the false truth, he saw everything: The great valleys full of the same green as always, The great distant mountains, more real than any feeling, All reality, with the sky and the air and the fields that exist, is present.( And once again the air, that he’d missed for so long, entered coolly into his lungs) And he felt that the air was opening again, but with pain, a liberty in his chest.(7/10/1930) . Alberto Caeiro

All the evil in the world comes from us bothering with each other, Wanting to do good, wanting to do evil. Our soul and the sky and the earth are enough for us. To want more is to lose this, and be unhappy. Alberto Caeiro

The Amorous Shepherd is a fruitless interlude, but those few poems are among the world’s greatest love poems, because they’re love poems about love, not about being poems. The poet loves because he loves, not because love exists. Unknown

Something changed in part of reality – my knees and my hands. What science has knowledge for this? The blind man goes on his way and I don’t make any more gestures. It’s already not the same time, or the same people, or anything the same. This is being real. Alberto Caeiro

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition. Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote. William Blake

Even so, I’m somebody. I’m the Discoverer of Nature.I’m the Argonaut of true sensations. I bring a new Universe to the UniverseBecause I bring the Universe to itself. Alberto Caeiro

If I could take a bite of the whole world And feel it on my palate I’d be more happy for a minute or so.. But I don’t always want to be happy. Sometimes you have to be Unhappy to be natural.. Not every day is sunny. When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come. So I take unhappiness with happiness Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange That there are mountains and plains And that there are cliffs and grass.. What you need is to be natural and calm In happiness and in unhappiness, To feel like someone seeing, To think like someone walking, And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies, And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful.. That’s how it is and that’s how it should be.. Alberto Caeiro

Night doesn’t fall for my eyes But my idea of the night is that it falls for my eyes. Beyond my thinking and having any thoughts The night falls concretely And the shining of stars exists like it had weight. Alberto Caeiro

All beings exist and nothing else And that’s why they’re called beings Alberto Caeiro

And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting –In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural. Alberto Caeiro

Things don’t have significance: they only have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things. Alberto Caeiro

When I’m depressed, I read Caeiro – he’s my fresh air. I become very calm, content, faithful – yes, I find faith in God, and in the soul’s transcendent living smallness, after reading the poems by that ungodly anti-humanist who goes unsurpassed on earth. Unknown

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales Acts like a sick god, but like a god. Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists, He knows things exist, that he exists, He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself, And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist. He knows being is the point. All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point.(10/1/1917). Alberto Caeiro

If I die very young, hear this: I was never anything but a kid playing. I was a heathen like the sun and the water, I had the universal religion only people don’t have. I was happy because I didn’t ask for anything at all, Or tried to find anything, And I didn’t find any more explanation Than the word explanation having no meaning at all. Alberto Caeiro

What does this think about that? Nothing thinks about anything. Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants? If it did, it would be people.Why am I worrying about this? If I think about these things, I’ll stop seeing trees and plants And stop seeing the EarthFor only seeing my thoughts.. I’ll get unhappy and stay in the dark. And so, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky. Alberto Caeiro

Praise be to God I’m not good, And have the natural egotism of flowers And rivers following their bed Preoccupied without knowing it Only with blooming and flowing. This is the only mission in the World, This–to exist clearly, And to know how to do it without thinking about it.) Alberto Caeiro

Yes: I exist inside my body. I’m not carrying the sun and the moon in my pocket. I don’t want to conquer worlds because I slept badly, And I don’t want to eat the world for breakfast because I have a stomach. Indifferent? No: a son of the earth, who, if he jumps, it’s wrong, A moment in the air that’s not for us, And only happy when his feet hit the ground again, Pow! In reality where nothing’s missing! (6/20/1919). Alberto Caeiro

Science is knowledge meeting humility meeting curiosity: ever-evolving, always learning. Atheism is often but knowledge meeting arrogance: a masquerade under the wing of the beauty of science. Religion is infamously a weight under the one wing; then under the other is atheism, the championed masquerade. Criss Jami

Spiritual humility is not about getting small, not about debasing oneself, but about approaching everything and everyone else with a readiness to see goodness and to be surprised. This is the humility of a child, which Jesus lauded. It is the humility of the scientist and the mystic. It has a lightness of step, not a heaviness of heart. That lightness is the surest litmus test I know for recognizing wisdom when you see it in the world or feel its stirrings in yourself. The questions that can lead us are already alive in our midst, waiting to be summoned and made real. It is a joy to name them. It is a gift to plant them in our senses, our bodies, the places we inhabit, the part of the world we can see and touch and help to heal. It is a relief to claim our love of each other and take that on as an adventure, a calling. It is a pleasure to wonder at the mystery we are and find delight in the vastness of reality that is embedded in our beings. It is a privilege to hold something robust and resilient called hope, which has the power to shift the world on its axis. Krista Tippett

Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived, " it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred. Daniel C. Dennett

When the sense of the earth unites with the sense of one's body, one becomes earth of the earth, a plant among plants, an animal born from the soil and fertilizing it. In this union, the body is confirmed in its pantheism. Unknown

I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am. I only regret not having loved you. Put your hands in mine And let’s be quiet, surrounded by life. Alberto Caeiro

The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything. When you’re at its bank you’re only at its bank. Alberto Caeiro

I don’t know what understanding myself is. I don’t look inside. I don’t believe I exist behind myself. Alberto Caeiro

Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing. I know they smell just as well as I know I existed. They’re things known from the outside. But now I know with my breathing from the back of my head. Alberto Caeiro

.moments of transport, and of comfort, and of a bracing vastness of possibility. That was all there for me sometimes when I plunged my mind into the Bible’s puzzles; and it was always there in the music of church. I wouldn’t have said it this way then. But I would feel all the cells in my body as I sang hymns that connected my little life with the grandeur of the cosmos, the Christian drama across space and time. This was my earliest experience of breath and body, mind and spirit soaring together, alive to both mystery and reality, in kinship with others both familiar and unknown. That’s one way I’d define the feeling of faith now. Krista Tippett

I’d like to have enough time and quiet To think about absolutely nothing, To not ever feel myself living, To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected. Alberto Caeiro

On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid, And I begin to meditate about problems I make up. Alberto Caeiro

Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it. Each thing only reminds us of what it is And it’s only what nothing else is. The fact that it’s it separates it from every other thing.( Everything’s nothing without another thing that’s not it). Alberto Caeiro

The hope is indeed that some will experience and believe: The purpose of a number of spiritual gurus is to demonstrate to God-fearing men faux spirituality. Criss Jami

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel. Unknown

It’s stupid, but it’s human, and that’s how it is. Unknown

Do I believe a thing has limits! ? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn’t have limits. Existence means there’s always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn’t always being some other thing that’s beyond it?” At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.“ Look, Caeiro.. think about numbers.. Where do they end? Take any number – say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 – there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger..““ But that’s just numbers, ” protested my master Caeiro.And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:“ What is 34 in Reality, anyway? . Unknown

But what you’re calling poetry is what everything is. It’s not even poetry – it’s seeing. These materialists are blind. You told me they say space is infinite. Where do they see that in space?” And I, disconcerted: “But don’t you think of space as infinite? Can’t you conceive of space as infinite?”“ I don’t conceive of anything as being infinite. How could I conceive of anything as being infinite?”“ But, man, ” I said, “Imagine space. Beyond that space is more space, and beyond that more, and then more, and more.. It never ends..““ Why?” asked my master Caeiro. Unknown

The Great Vaccination – the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia. Unknown

And the idea of nothingness – the most terrifying of all ideas, when thought of with feeling – has, in my dear master’s work and in my memories of him, something as high and luminous as sunlight upon snowy, unscalable peaks. Unknown

In exceptional circumstances – exceptional in that all circumstances in life are exceptional, especially those which are nothing in themselves and come to be everything in their results. Unknown

I love flowers for being flowers, directly. And I love trees for being trees without my thought. Alberto Caeiro

That thing over there was more there than it’s there! Yes, sometimes I cry about the perfect body that doesn’t exist. But the perfect body is the bodiest body there can be, And the rest are the dreams men have, The myopia of someone who doesn’t look very much, Alberto Caeiro

Let’s only care about the place where we are. There’s beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else. If there’s someone beyond the curve in the road, Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the road, That’s what the road is to them. Alberto Caeiro

Panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Charles Hartshorne

Nothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given. Unknown

The cloudless day is richer at its close; A golden glory settles on the lea; Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool repose To mellowing landscape, and to calming sea. And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light, The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines; Freed form the noonday glare, the favour’d sight Increasing grace in earth and sky divines. But ere the purest radiance crowns the green, Or fairest lustre fills th’ expectant grove, The twilight thickens, and the fleeting scene Leaves but a hallow’d memory of love! . H.P. Lovecraft

I’m a keeper of flocks. The flock is my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. I think with my eyes and with my ears And with my hands and feet And with my nose and mouth. Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling it And eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning. That’s why when on a hot day I feel sad from liking it so much, And I throw myself lengthwise on the grass And shut my hot eyes, And feeling my whole body lying on reality, I know the truth and I’m happy. Alberto Caeiro

Let’s be simple and calm, Like brooks and trees, And God will love us by making Beautiful things like the trees and brooks for us, And give us greenness in his spring, And a river for us to go to when we end... Alberto Caeiro

One day when God fell asleep And the Holy Ghost went off flying, He got into a box of miracles and stole three. With the first he made it so that no one would know he had run away. With the second he made himself a human boy forever. With the third he created a Christ eternally crucified And left him nailed to the cross that there is in HeavenWhere he’s used as a model for other crosses. Then he ran away to the sun And came down on the first ray he caught. Alberto Caeiro

Nature never remembers, that’s why she’s beautiful. Alberto Caeiro

I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant. Alberto Caeiro

If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it. I’m a mystic, but only in my body, My soul is simple and doesn’t think. Alberto Caeiro

I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, “Are you at peace with yourself?” and he answered, “No, I’m at peace.” It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one. Unknown

Sometimes in the evening on Summer days, Even when there’s not a breeze at all, it seems Like there’s a light breeze blowing for a minute But the trees are unmoving In every leaf of their leaves And our feelings have had an illusion, An illusion of what would please them... Alberto Caeiro

Yes, this is what my senses alone have learned:– Things don’t have significance: they only have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things. Alberto Caeiro

Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism. Richard Dawkins

The origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God? Arthur Schopenhauer

Within biblical theology it remains the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming goodness of the other. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good; but it was not itself divine. At its height, which according to Genesis 1 is the creation of humans, it was designed to REFLECT God, both to reflect God back to God in worship and to reflect God into the rest of creation in stewardship. But this image-bearing capacity of humankind is not in itself the same thing as divinity. Collapsing this distinction means taking a large step toward a pantheism within which there is no way of understanding, let alone addressing, the problem of evil. N.T. Wright

Lightly, lightly, very lightly, A wind passes very lightly And goes away, always very lightly. And I don’t know what I think And I don’t want to know. Alberto Caeiro

The living and efficaciously acting moral order is itself God. We require no other God, nor can we grasp any other. Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of 'God' which is metaphorical – for example, a theist who believes in 'God' as a principle of conscience or morality. This 'God' exists in a person’s mind and it is not something which atheists will dispute. Atheists agree that gods exist as ideas in people’s minds; the disagreement lies over whether any gods actually exist independently of human beliefs. Those are the gods which atheists disbelieve in or deny. The second type of theism involves gods that exist as physical objects: stones, trees, rivers, or even the universe itself. Believers treat these objects are their gods, but do atheists reject their existence? Of course not – but how do they then remain atheists? The point of disagreement here is whether the label 'god' communicates any information beyond the more common label of 'stone, ' 'tree, ' or 'universe.' If not, then as far as atheists are concerned, those objects don’t merit the extra label 'god' and they remain atheists. . Austin Cline

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Mikhail Gorbachev

It seems to me that the Russian prestige is declining and that America holds in its hands the immediate future of the world: as long as America knows how to develop the sense of the earth at the same time as her sense of liberty." [Written from Peking, October 1945, on the eve of departure, after having been stuck there since the war began.] Unknown

The Tejo runs down from SpainAnd the Tejo goes into the sea in Portugal.Everybody knows that. But not many people know the river of my village And where it comes from And where it’s going. And so, because it belongs to less people, The river of my village is freer and greater. Alberto Caeiro

He possesses the minimum sensibility necessary for his intelligence not to be merely mathematical, the minimum a human being needs so that it can be proven with a thermometer that he's not dead. Unknown

Other times when I hear the wind blow I feel that just hearing the wind blow makes it worth being born. Alberto Caeiro

I’m in no hurry. What for? The sun and moon aren’t in a hurry: they’re right. Hurrying is believing people can get past their legs, Or that, jumping, they can land past their shadow. No; I don’t know how to hurry. Alberto Caeiro

Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism. Shelby D. Hunt

This one god could be of the deistic or pantheistic sort. Deism might be superior in explaining why God has seemingly left us to our own devices and pantheism could be the more logical option as it fits well with the ontological argument's 'maximally-great entity' and doesn't rely on unproven concepts about 'nothing' (as in 'creation out of nothing'). A mixture of the two, pandeism, could be the most likely God-concept of all. Raphael Lataster

We make our journey in the company of others; the deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind us. All our paths lie together in the hand of god and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey across the hand of god as surely as you are. Daniel Quinn

All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together. Daniel Quinn

She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like before, I go on like before, alone in the field. It’s like my head had been lowered, And if I think this, and raise my head And the golden sun dries the need to cry I can’t stop having. How vast the field and interior love... ! I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was water and trees losing their leaves. Alberto Caeiro