Over 1600 quotes from the work of the great visionary, thinker and reformer Rudolf Steiner
The Christ Impulse was so great that mankind of the present has understood but very little of it, and only in a later age will it be wholly comprehended.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 103 – The Gospel of St. John: Lecture X: The Effect of the Christ Impulse Within Mankind – Hamburg, 30th May 1908
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19080530a01.html
Translated by Maud B. Monges
Art of Hans Georg Leiendecker
Previously posted on 17 July 2019
The esoteric pupil must try to discover the positive in every phenomenon and in every being. He will then soon notice a hidden beauty underneath the ugly outer appearance, that even behind the exterior of a criminal something good can be found, that even in a mentally disturbed person, in one way or another, the divine soul is hidden.
This exercise is somewhat related to what one calls refraining from criticism. However, one must not conceive this matter as if one should call black white and white black. There is a difference between an evaluation that emanates from the personality and is based on personal sympathy and antipathy. There is another standpoint possible where someone places him- or herself lovingly in the place of an unfamiliar phenomenon or being and constantly wondering: how does the other come to be like this or do things in this way?
From such a position, it happens naturally that a person will be more apt to want to help the other to overcome his or her imperfections instead of merely commenting or criticising.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 267 – Seelenübungen (page 58-59)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_267.pdf#view=Fit
Previously posted on 13 July 2019
Anger has its value for the development of the human being. The human being must purify himself, he must overcome anger. Anger is something that works beneficially in that it is overcome. The human being would never be able to reach perfection without conquering anger.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 108 – Die Beantwortung von Welt- und Lebensfragen durch Anthroposophie – St. Gallen, November 21, 1909 (page 100)
https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_108.pdf#view=Fit
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
Previously posted on 12 July 2019
Nothing on the Earth happens that is not related to the spirit. Our soul with her good and bad deeds is closely related to all that happens on the Earth. If an earthquake happens, we can never see it as individual karma. It belongs to the karma of humanity as a whole. A person with a materialistic worldview will think someone who makes such a statement to be superstitious, but whoever says that, is unaware that such a remark is really quite childlike. In the same way that no flower grows without spiritual forces, without being an expression of spirit and soul, there is no earthquake, no volcanic eruption without a spiritual reason, without a spiritual cause.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 108 – Die Beantwortung von Welt- und Lebensfragen durch Anthroposophie – Pforzheim, January 17, 1909 (p.93)
https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_108.pdf#view=Fit
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
Also available in RSArchive: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA108/English/Singles/19090117p01.html
Previously posted on 11 July 2019
Half- or quarter-truths have far worse effects than complete errors. Thus it is a half- or quarter-truth which underlies what is so frequently described today as analytical psychology or psychoanalysis. People are truly seeking but they are groping in the dark; they divine that many things are hidden in the foundations of the soul, but they cannot resolve to take the real steps into the spiritual world, so as to find what is hidden there, in the depths of the soul.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 168 – The Influence of the Dead on the Life of Man on Earth – Zurich, 3 December 1916
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19161203p01.html
Previously posted on 10 July 2019
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