Transcending oneself: this is the great imperative of the human condition; and there is another that anticipates it and at the same time prolongs it: dominating oneself. The noble man is one who dominates himself; the holy man is one who transcends himself. Nobility and holiness are the imperatives of the human state.

Intelligence, since it distinguishes, has the faculty of perceiving proportions. The spiritual man integrates these proportions into his will, into his soul and into his life. All defects manifest a lack of proportion; they are errors that are lived.

To be spiritual means not to deny with one’s ‘being’ what one affirms with one’s ‘knowledge’, that is to say, what is accepted by the intelligence. Truth lived: incorruptibility and generosity.

Frithjof Schuon