Emanuel Swedenborg Quotes

Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end.

Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want, and do.

Heaven is not located on high, but where the good of love is, and this resides within a person, wherever he or she might be.

Worship does not consist in prayers and in external devotion, but in a life of kindness.

True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.

Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover the separation of the good from the evil, is visitation; and the good are then removed, and the evil are left behind.

For those who trust in the Divine all things are moving towards an everlasting state of happiness, and no matter what happens at any time to them, it contributes to that state.

Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning.

Our love is our life itself. What our love is like determines how we live and therefore everything about what we are as human beings.

Conscience is God's presence in humans.

If we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.

The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves-that is loving.

Men live a moral life, either from regard to the Diving Being, or from regard to the opinion of the people in the world; and when a moral life is practised out of regard to the Divine Being, it is a spiritual life. Both appear alike in their outward form; but in their inward, they are completely different. The one saves a man, but the other does not; for he that leads a moral life out of regard to the Divine Being is led by him, but he who does so from regard to the opinion of people in the world is led by himself.

Everything good or true that the angels inspire in us is God's, so God is constantly talking to us. He talks very differently, though, to one person than to another.

All our longings for what is loving and true reach out into heaven. They put us in touch with angels who are feeling the same way and unite us with them.

A person's life from infancy to old age is nothing else than an advance from the world towards heaven, the last stage of which is death; the actual transition from one life to the next.

We are all spirits inwardly. This is what's alive in the body, not the body on its own.

Seen in its own right, a loving person's inner spirit is an angel of heaven, and while we are living in the body we are also in the company of angels, even though we are not aware of it; and once we are released from the body we join them.

Man knows that there is love, but he does not know what love is.

All religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good

People who have intended and loved what is evil in the world intend and love what is evil in the other life, and then they no longer allow themselves to be led away from it. This is why people who are absorbed in evil are connected to hell and actually are there in spirit; and after death they crave above all to be where their evil is. So after death, it is we, not the Lord, who cast ourselves into hell.

God created us in such a way that our inner self is in the spiritual world and our outer self is in the physical world. This was so that the spiritual part of us, which belongs in heaven, could be planted in the physical part the way a seed is planted in the ground.

We are, because God is.

Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows.

Love comes into being through useful service to others.

God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; he can benefit us only indirectly through each other. For this reason he inspires us with his love

A man after death, is not a natural but a spiritual man; nevertheless he still appears in all respects like himself.

Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.

A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship.

Love is the life of humanity.

The quality of the Lord's church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil

The activity of love and faith is what makes heaven.

True wisdom is seeing what is beneficial to your eternal life, and managing your life according to that. You do this when you not only know these things and grasp them with your understanding, but also will and do them.

Faith is knowing and thinking those truths: charity is willing and doing them.

This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.

Angels can recognize the nature of our unique essence on the basis of nothing more than a brief conversation with us. From hearing the tone of our voice angels sense what we love; and from hearing what we say, angels sense our level of understanding.

The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life: because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of his love, and therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite, would be to destroy the spirit utterly.

Goodness shapes our will, and truth shapes our understanding.

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.

Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.

Every man is received in heaven who receives heaven in himself while in the world, and he is excluded who does not.

The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.

Angelic happiness is in service, from service, and according to service.

I have seen a thousand times that Angels are human form, or men, for I have conversed with them as man to man, sometimes with one alone, sometimes with many in company.

Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them

The end of creation is that all things may return to the Creator and be united with Him.

Heaven is such that all who have lived well, of whatever religion, have a place there.

Man is so created that as to his internal he cannot die; for he is capable of believing in God, and thus of being conjoined to God by faith and love, and to be conjoined to God is to live to eternity.