Emanuel Swedenborg Biography Quotes 28 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Emanuel Swedenborg was born Emanuel Swedberg in Stockholm in 1688, the son of Jesper Swedberg and Sara Behm. His father, a Lutheran clergyman who became bishop of Skara, was known for his frank piety and for speaking of providential experiences; this atmosphere of devotion and moral rigor left a lasting imprint on the son. The Behm family brought ties to commerce and mining, which later proved relevant to Swedenborg's career. From youth he showed an aptitude for mathematics, languages, and making things with his hands, traits that would carry through both his scientific and spiritual vocations.

Education and European Travels
Swedenborg studied at Uppsala University and took a degree in 1709. He benefited from the encouragement of Erik Benzelius the Younger, then librarian at Uppsala and later archbishop of the Church of Sweden, who also became Swedenborg's brother-in-law. Between 1710 and 1715 Swedenborg traveled in England, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. In London and the Low Countries he immersed himself in practical mechanics and the scientific literature of the day, reading Newton and the corpuscular philosophers, visiting workshops and docks, and learning from instrument makers. The journey broadened his perspective and equipped him with the cosmopolitan habits that would mark his later life.

Engineer and Assessor of Mines
Upon returning to Sweden, Swedenborg entered into close collaboration with the celebrated engineer Christopher Polhem. He edited Daedalus Hyperboreus, a periodical showcasing mechanical inventions in the Swedish realm, and assisted in projects involving canals, locks, and devices for lifting and transport. In 1716 King Charles XII appointed him assessor extraordinary to the Board of Mines, where he inspected works, evaluated ores, and wrote technical memoranda. He traveled extensively to mining districts and interacted with colleagues such as the geologist Daniel Tilas. In 1719, by decision of Queen Ulrika Eleonora in the wake of Sweden's political reordering, he and his family were ennobled and he adopted the name Swedenborg. In 1724 he was offered the chair of mathematics at Uppsala, which he declined in order to remain engaged with applied science; later that year he became full assessor. He kept the post until 1747, when he requested release to devote himself to writing.

Scientific and Philosophical Writings
During these decades Swedenborg produced a stream of technical and speculative works. His Opera Philosophica et Mineralia (1734), printed in Dresden and Leipzig, encompassed metallurgy (notably a large treatise on iron) and a bold Principia that sought to explain the formation of matter and the cosmos by a dynamic, geometrical method. He followed with De Infinito (1734), probing the relation between the finite and the infinite, and then turned to anatomy and physiology in Oeconomia Regni Animalis (1740, 1741) and Regnum Animale (1744, 1745). In these studies he examined the brain, nerves, and circulation, searching for the seat of the soul and the means by which spirit and body are conjoined. He wrote mainly in Latin, combined observations with imaginative models, and tried to unify disparate fields under a coherent philosophy of causes.

Spiritual Crisis and New Vocation
In middle age Swedenborg experienced an inner crisis that he later described as a turning point. In 1744, 1745 he reported dreams and visions and concluded that the spiritual world had been opened to him. Convinced that his calling had changed, he gradually stepped away from official duties. He received permission in 1747 to leave the Board of Mines, retaining a portion of his salary, and began a new phase as a biblical exegete and theologian, often working abroad to arrange printing.

Theological Works
Swedenborg's theological corpus is extensive. Beginning with Arcana Coelestia (1749, 1756), published in London, he offered a verse-by-verse explication of Genesis and Exodus, presenting the doctrine of correspondences by which earthly narratives mirror spiritual realities. In 1758 he issued several works, including Heaven and Hell, which described the structure of the spiritual world and the principles of human freedom and responsibility. He continued with Divine Love and Wisdom (1763), Divine Providence (1764), and Apocalypse Revealed (1766), and treated ethics and society in Conjugial Love (1768). His last major synthesis, True Christian Religion (1771), summarized his claims that the Lord had entrusted him with a mission to clarify Christian doctrine for a new age. His books were read by clergy and laypeople alike; among early English readers and advocates was the clergyman Thomas Hartley, who helped present Swedenborg's ideas to a wider public. In Swedish political circles, Count Anders Johan von Hopken, a leading statesman, testified to Swedenborg's sobriety of character, even while others reserved judgment.

Reception, Controversies, and Anecdotes
Reactions to Swedenborg varied. Some scientists and churchmen admired his industry and the moral seriousness of his project; others, such as the naturalist Carl Linnaeus and his circle, viewed his visionary claims skeptically. In the late 1760s the spread of his ideas in Gothenburg drew the attention of ecclesiastical authorities, and proceedings were initiated concerning the teaching of doctrines based on his books. Swedenborg himself wrote letters to officials defending the orthodoxy of central points as he understood them. The matter ended with restrictions on the dissemination of such teachings in the pulpit, but without a formal condemnation of him personally.

Anecdotes about extraordinary sight and timely messages circulated widely in his lifetime. Among the most discussed are reports that, while in Gothenburg in 1759, he described a distant fire in Stockholm before news arrived, and a story that he conveyed to Queen Louisa Ulrika information purportedly from a deceased relative. These accounts were repeated by contemporaries and debated then as now; Swedenborg neither made them the center of his public work nor wove them into his doctrinal arguments.

Later Years and Death
Swedenborg divided his time between Sweden and the publishing centers of Amsterdam, The Hague, and London, where printers accustomed to Latin theological works could handle his large manuscripts. He lived simply, never married, and continued to correspond with acquaintances from his scientific and ecclesiastical years, including members of the Benzelius family. In 1771 he traveled to London to see True Christian Religion through the press. He suffered a stroke late that year and died there on 29 March 1772. He was buried at the Swedish church in London; his remains were transferred to Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden in the early twentieth century.

Legacy
Swedenborg's name spans two distinct yet related careers. As an engineer and assessor he aided Sweden's early modern mining economy and sought comprehensive natural explanations that ranged from metallurgy to cosmology. As a theologian he proposed a spiritually interpreted Christianity grounded in Scripture, freedom, and charity, insisting on a correspondence between visible and invisible orders. After his death, circles of readers in Britain, Sweden, and North America gathered around his writings and, in time, formed the nucleus of what came to be called the New Church. The testimonies of figures around him, from the supportive observations of Erik Benzelius and Count von Hopken to the reservations voiced by scientific contemporaries such as Linnaeus, capture the complexity of his reputation: a disciplined observer who believed he had been called to report on the world of spirit, and who wrote with the same painstaking care about furnaces and ores as about angels and heaven.

Our collection contains 28 quotes who is written by Emanuel, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Never Give Up - Love - Free Will & Fate - Faith.