spiritual wisdom

In 1445, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type, individual letters that could be moved around a printing press to change what words were transferred to the blank page. Empowered by this revolutionary technology, he printed the very first book ever published: the Bible. Before the printing press, monks painstakingly hand-copied every edition of the Bible, often taking three years or more to complete the task. Gutenberg could produce 180 copies of the book in the same amount of time.

After Arabic movable type was produced, the first printed edition of the Quran rolled off the presses in Venice, Italy, and was exported to the Ottoman Empire in 1538. By the early 1800s, Hindu scripts were likewise being mass-produced. As religions the world over embraced Gutenberg’s invention, sacred books became more available, and less expensive, than ever before.

For centuries, religious texts were often the only books in a household. Children learned to read by tracing their fingers down the pages, and in the evenings families would convene to hear stories of faith, love, and devotion. Collected here from a variety of religious texts are words of deep wisdom from cultures around the world, made ubiquitously available online through technology that Gutenberg never could have dreamed possible.

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When there is harmony between the mind, heart, and resolution, then nothing is impossible.

~ Rig Veda

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

~ The Bible, James 3:13

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

~ Tao Te Ching

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.

~ Tao Te Ching