Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.
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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
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There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world's sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.
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The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they posses a really effective system of mind-manipulation. Under a scientific dictator, education will rea
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The poet is born with the capacity of arranging words in such a way that something of the quality of the graces and inspirations he has received can make itself felt to other human beings in the white spaces, so to speak, between the lines of his verse. This is a great and precious gift; but if the poet remains content with his gift, if he persists in worshipping the beauty in art and nature without going on to make himself capable, through selflessness, of apprehending Beauty as it is in the divine Ground, then he is only an idolater.
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I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
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The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.
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At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
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Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
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I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
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Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.
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... that's what living happens to be ... the physiological denial of reverence and good manners and Christianity.... At your age one's quite o...
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If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution -- then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.
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Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
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The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.
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Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to ...
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The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
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Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.
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Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.
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Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.
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To associate with other like-minded people in small, purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction. Exclusiveness will add to the pleasure of being several, but at one; and secrecy will intensify it almost to ecstasy.
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To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
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Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
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Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.
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The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
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We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.
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Experience teaches only the teachable.
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A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.
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Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
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There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
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