"The person of faith, in ritual or worship, while reciting a prayer, singing a psalm, and invoking a mantra, feels deep within a communion that, like the philosopher’s stone of alchemy, transforms the lead and copper of animal existence into the silver and gold of divine delight."

“Bookish academics need to remember that when it comes to analyzing works regarded as sacred by vast numbers of people, sound scholarship is like the firmness of bones, while appreciation and sensitivity are like flesh and blood. Without the latter, the former is merely an ugly skeleton: morbid and monstrous, lifeless and lamentable. With the latter, scholarship becomes robust and living.”

“all the light and beauty, all the grandeur and majesty of the universe are unraveled only in the tiny retinas of human beings.”

“The religious approach to spirituality is like delighting in a gourmet meal; the scientific approach is like studying recipes or chemically analyzing the ingredients of the menu.”

“Ultimately, we all become photographs.”

“condemning religions as a whole would be like wanting to destroy a garden because weeds have disfigured it.”

“The spiritual quest is the expression of the deepest longing to connect with the Whole.”