quotations about reincarnation
This life is but a brief tenure, one of many perspectives a spirit must experience in the quest for eternity.
BRIAN RATHBONE
Call of the Herald
Time's hidden ways thine eyes reveal to me:
Deep in their vision broods the memory
Of all the myriad lives thy soul has known,
Thou passionate pilgrim of eternity!
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
If I were to come back in another life, I'd like to be reincarnated as my own clone.
JAROD KINTZ
At Even One Penny, This Book Would Be Overpriced
I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man, and believing as I do in the theory of reincarnation, I live in the hope that if not in this birth, in some other birth I shall be able to hug all of humanity in friendly embrace.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Teachings of Mahatma Gandhi
I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.
LENI RIEFENSTAHL
The Sieve of Time: The Memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl
The object of our sojourns on earth, as apart from the gaining of experience, is but one. The loosing of ourselves from the coil of reincarnation, which, over and over again, brings us back to earth as on a coiled spring, until, having learned the last lesson of matter, leaped the last barrier, we are freed for ever from earth.
SHAW DESMOND
Reincarnation for Everyman
Immortality like this is about as useful as sunscreen on a submarine.
ELIZABETH MARX
All's Fair in Vanity's War
The chief purpose of reincarnation is education. To this end we are born again and again on earth, not because of any external pressure, but because we, as souls, desire to grow. The driving-power at the back of reincarnation, which brings us to earth again, is the thirst for experience, the desire for knowledge, the yearning to mingle in the throb and rush of physical existence. To many people, whose lives here have been rather difficult, these desires seem inconceivable. The reason is that satiety kills out desire; a man who has just eaten a hearty dinner has no desire to think of other meals. In the same way, at the end of an incarnation, it is to be expected that we should have little desire for rebirth. Furthermore, our waking consciousness is only a portion of our actual consciousness, and our deeper selves do not care. This is the case with reincarnation; the physical consciousness, limited in outlook to the narrow horizons of a single earth-life, does not desire to be reborn, but the soul consciousness, having a splendid goal in view, is anxious to return.
IRVING STEIGER COOPER
Reincarnation: The Hope of the World
I know I am deathless...
We have thus far exhausted
trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and
trillions ahead of them
WALT WHITMAN
Leaves of Grass
It may be that no life is found,
Which only to one engine bound
Falls off, but cycles always round.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Two Voices
My whole belief system is that our paths are drawn for us. I believe in reincarnation. I believe we're here to learn and grow. We choose how we come into this life based on what it is we have to learn. Some people have harder lessons than others.
GILLIAN ANDERSON
"Gillian of the Spirits", Movieline Magazine, January 1999
There is nothing against a permanently surviving spirit-individuality being in some way given off at death, as a definite wireless message is given off by a sending apparatus working in a particular ways. But it must be remembered that the wireless message only becomes a message again when it comes in contact with a new, material structure - the receiver. So with our possible spirit-emanation. It would never think or feel unless again "embodied" in some way. Our personalities are so based on body that it is really impossible to think of survival which would be in any true sense personal without a body of sorts. I can think of something being given off which could bear the same relation to men and women as a wireless message to the transmitting apparatus for mind.
JULIAN HUXLEY
attributed, The Buddhism Primer: An Introduction to Buddhism
I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums.... All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me.... Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
I recognized you instantly. All of our lives flashed through my mind in a split second. I felt a pull so strongly towards you that I almost couldn't stop it.
J. STERLING
In Dreams
We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life to the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return. When we Illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves ... sometimes even physically.
RAQUEL CEPEDA
Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
At last, after many lives of striving, many lives of working, growing purer and nobler and wiser, life after life, the Soul makes a distinct and clear speaking forth of a will that now has grown strong; and when that will announces itself as a clear and definite purpose, no longer the whisper that aspires, but the word that commands, then that resolute will strikes at the gateway which leads to the Outer Court of the Temple, and strikes with a knocking which none may deny--for it has in it the strength of the Soul that is determined to achieve, and that has learned enough to understand the vastness of the task that it undertakes.
ANNIE BESANT
In the Outer Court
Only one who denies that the soul lives on can deny reincarnation. For the rest ... it must be considered.
EDWARD REAUGH SMITH
The Soul's Long Journey
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
KHALIL GIBRAN
The Prophet
I don't believe in reincarnation because there's an expert on this question, and he's Jesus of Nazareth. He's the only person in history who died, rose from the dead, and spoke authoritatively on this question. And Jesus says reincarnation doesn't happen. He says that there's only one death and after that comes the judgment.
LEE STROBEL
The Case for Faith
I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.
DEBORAH FELDMAN
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots