The more sensitive the lunatic, the less able is he to resist this prying interest of the normal human being. I felt that Renée's change of key - to myself, I compared Renée to a sweet melody, a little flat despite its laborious harmonies - was app...
Sufism (tasawwuf) is not wearing clothes that you patched; it is not weeping when the singers sing their songs; and it is not dancing, shouting, experiencing ecstatic states, or passing out as if you’ve gone mad. Rather, Sufism is to become whole w...
The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes peop...
God alone knows exactly what you and I must endure in order to form His character in us. It is in our trials that God refines us and removes our impurities. Like refined gold, when we pass through our trials, people will see His perfect reflection in...
Beauty combined with wantonness frequently ends in the drawn twitch, fixed eye and helpless limbs of life-in-death. It is Nature’s revenge on the outraged body,—and do you know, Eternity’s revenge on the impure Soul is extremely similar?
I've thought often about why - why?! - anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I've come up with, and I think it makes sense, is fear of b...
If anyone views himself as being totally perfect in the actual sense of the word, he is undoubtedly imperfect in God's eyes. For the thought alone is one of presumption, impurity and imperfection. One may rightly strive for perfection pertaining t...
And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I dream. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; now that I have unlimited power, I am going to create a tiger. Oh incompetence! Never do my dreams engender the wild ...
Just as God's love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not exist anywhere but in the worldly, in an infinite variety of concrete worldly action,...
A blanket could be used as a water purification device. Place it between a flowing water source and your storage barrel and let the blanket filter out impurities. Then after your water is pure, drop a brick in the barrel, and let the water molecules ...
Scripture is wrought with a clear message of Jesus’ utter disregard for appearance and social rank. In Judean society, it was a major taboo for a man to even speak to a woman who was not his own wife or daughter; yet Jesus interacted regularly with...
writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You...
You are as the yellow leaf. The messengers of death are at hand. You are to travel far away. What will you take with you? You are the lamp To lighten the way. Then hurry, hurry. When your light shines Without impurity or desire You will come into the...
I follow Plato only with my mind Pure beauty strikes me as a little thin A little cold, however beautiful. I am in love with what is mixed and impure Doubtful, dark and hard to disencumber I want beauty I must dig for, search for. Pure beauty is begi...
Since we nowadays think that all a man needs for acquisition of truth is to exert his brain more or less vigorously, and since we consider an approach to knowledge hardly sensible, we have lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing o...
O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live... Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives h...
It is tragic to see how the religious sentiment of the West has become so individualized that concepts such as "a contrite heart," have come to refer only to the personal experiences of guilt and willingness to do penance for it. The awareness of our...
The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic ...
The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the so...
Every man who begets a free act projects his personality into the infinite. If he gives a poor man a penny grudgingly, that penny pierces the poor man’s hand, falls, pierces the earth, bores holes in suns, crosses the firmament and compromises the ...
