Quotes about Soul-searching

Every time you ask for forgiveness, you recognize that the biggest problems you face in life exist inside of you, not outside of you.

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns.

Why am I unhappy? The question carries with it the virus that will destroy everything.

It wasn't necessary to know your own demons in order to find God.

For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God's presence resides?

Self-examination [means] setting up a court in [your] conscience and keeping a register there that by strict scrutiny a man may know how things stand between God and his own soul.

Preacher brethren, this is the time to blush that we have no shame, the time to weep for our lack of tears, the time to bend low that we have lost the humble touch of servants, the time to groan that we have no burden, the time to be angry with ourselves that we have no anger over the devil's monopoly in this ''end time'' hour, the time to chastise ourselves that the world can so easily get along with us and not attempt to chastise us.

We are warmed by fire, not by the smoke of the fire. We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection in our own acts. We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul which is the principle of all our acts.

Religious life is an encounter with the living God. Sometimes that encounter is preceded by a kind of soul-searching agony that tries desperately not to hear, runs in the opposite direction, and frantically tries to reason itself out of answering the invitation.

Open your eyes and look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're livin'.

Nevertheless, faithfully interrogate your own souls, whether ye have not been unduly puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity; and whether ye have not been so desirous of the human praise that is accorded to these virtues, that ye have envied some who possessed them.