Emanuel Swedenborg > Quotes

“Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“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.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“The sky is an enormous man.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“Love comes into being through useful service to others.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“We do need to realize, though, that it is the quality of our love that determines the quality of this life.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell

“The nature of heaven is to provide a place there for all who lead good lives, no matter what their religion may be.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“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.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven Volume 1: The Deluxe New Century Edition

“Man, before he is being regenerated, does not even know that any internal man exists, much
less is he acquainted with its nature and quality.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven Volume 1: The Deluxe New Century Edition

“for heaven is within us, and people who have heaven within them come into heaven. The heaven within us is our acknowledgment of the Divine and our being led by the Divine.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell

“Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man (n. 368)
(Divine Love and Wisdom, 1763)”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

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

“In the spiritual body moreover, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“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.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell

“People are unaware that spirits even exist, let alone that angels are present with them.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“It is recognized that non-Christians live lives that are just as moral as the lives of Christians—many of them, in fact, live more moral lives. A moral life may be lived either to satisfy the Divine or to satisfy people in this world. A moral life that is lived to satisfy the Divine is a spiritual life. The two look alike in outward form, but inwardly they are totally different. One saves us, the other does not. This is because if we live a moral life to satisfy the Divine we are being led by the Divine; while if we live a moral life to satisfy people in this world, we are being led by ourselves.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell

“A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth—the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“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.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Afterlife: A Guided Tour to Heaven and Its Wonders

“Man, when he is re-born, passes through the ages as he who is born; and the preceding state is always as an egg in respect to the subsequent one, thus he is continually conceived and born: and this not only when he lives in the world, but also when he comes into another life to eternity: and still when he cannot be further perfected, then to be as an egg to those things which remain to be manifested, which are indefinite.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“Others work among the spirits that have just arrived in the world of spirits. Again others raise the children who have died in infancy. Swedenborg ensures the parents of these infants that 'All children whether born within or outside of the church, are adopted by the Lord and become Angels'.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“for every man’s soul is in a spiritual body after it has cast off the material coverings which it carried about in the world.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom

“It is amazing but true that it is easy for any of us to rebuke someone else who is intending to do something evil and say, “Don’t do that—that’s a sin!” And yet it is difficult for us to say the same thing to ourselves. The reason is that saying it to ourselves requires a movement of the will, but saying it to someone else requires only a low level of thought based on things we have heard.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Regeneration: Spiritual Growth and How It Works

“The spiritual idea of distances of space is the same as of distances of good or distances of truth, which are affinities and likenesses according to states of goodness and truth.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom

“There are two loves that have been deeply rooted in the human race for a long time now: love for dominating everyone, and love for possessing everyone’s wealth. If the reins are let out on the first type of love, it rushes on until it wants to be the God of all heaven. If the reins are let out on the second type of love, it rushes on until it wants to be the God of the whole world. All other forms of love for evil are ranked below these two and serve as their army.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Regeneration: Spiritual Growth and How It Works

“What could be sweeter to us than to hear and persuade ourselves that we can be saved, even if we live like a savage beast? Even non-Christians see that this is false, and many of them shudder at Christian teachings when they observe how Christians live.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“All the ancient churches were churches representative of spiritual things; the rites, and also the statutes, according to which their worship was established, consisted of pure correspondence.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion, Vol 1

“A spiritual church first becomes a church when it acts as bidden by charity, charity being the true teaching of faith.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“The angels also said, “When people arrive in this world from the physical one and hear that they are in another world, they gather together in many places to form groups. They ask where heaven and hell are, and also where God is. After they have been taught, they start arguing, disputing, and fighting about whether God exists. This is a result of the great number of materialists in the physical world today. When the topic of religion comes up, materialists start to debate about it with one another and with other groups. The ensuing proposition and debate rarely results in an affirmation of the faith that God exists. Materialists associate more and more with the evil, because only from God can one do something good with a love for what is good.” [3]”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity Volume 1: The Portable New Century Edition

“When they enter the church, and even more when they climb the stairs into the pulpit, I know that the people meant by Lucifer in Isaiah—the people of Babylon, especially those who named themselves the Society of Jesus—are overcome with passion. For many of them that passion comes from a hellish love. They raise their voices more vehemently and draw sighs from their chests more deeply than those whose passion comes from a heavenly love. There”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity Volume 1: The Portable New Century Edition