God often takes a course for accomplishing His purposes directly contrary to what our narrow views would prescribe. He brings a death upon our feelings, wishes, and prospects when He is about to give us the desire of our hearts.
John Newton
Man has many wishes that he does not really wish to fulfil, and it would be a misunderstanding to suppose the contrary. He wants them to remain wishes, they have value only in his imagination; their fulfilment would be a bitter disappointment to him. Such a desire is the desire for eternal life. If it were fulfilled, man would become thoroughly sick of living eternally, and yearn for death. In reality man wishes merely to avoid a premature, violent or gruesome death. Everything has its measure, says a pagan philosopher; in the end we weary of everything, even of life; a time comes when man desires death. Consequently there is nothing frightening about a normal, natural death, the death of a man who has fulfilled himself and lived out his life.
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.
Kenneth Clark
To enter your Castle (soul) is not a journey that takes you away from the world; rather it brings you directly into the world. It brings you fully into your soul, and into your power in the world...Mystics change the world around them more dramatically and more positively than can ever be measured. The mystic works on the invisible plane, relying on God, prayer and grace.
Caroline Myss
No one says in the morning: A day is soon past, let us wait for the night. On the contrary, in the evening we consider what we shall do the next day. We should be very sorry to spend even one day at the mercy of time and bores. … Who can be certain of spending an hour without being bored, if he takes no care to fill even that short period according to his pleasure. Yet what we cannot be certain of for an hour, we sometimes feel assured of for life, and say: “If death is the end of everything, why give ourselves so much trouble? We are extremely foolish to make such a pother about the future”—that is to say, we are extremely foolish not to entrust our destinies to chance, and to provide for the interval which lies between us and death.
Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues
A thought is an upshot of the desire. When someone thinks about what he wants, he does not think of something undesirable. For example, a person never thinks about the day of his death. On the contrary, he will always contemplate his perpetuity, for this is his desire. Thus, one always thinks of what is desirable (...) It turns out that thought serves desire, and desire is the “self” of the person. Now, there is a great self, or a small self. A great self dominates the small selves. He who is a small self has no dominion whatsoever, and the advice is to magnify the self through the diligence of the thought on the desire, since it grows to the extent that one thinks of it.
Yehuda Ashlag
Newton, John
Newton, Virgil Miller
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