I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
Religion, like poetry, is not a mere idea, it is expression. The self-expression of God is in the endless variety of creation; and our attitude toward the Infinite Being must also in its expression have a variety of individuality ceaseless and unendi.
I ask my destiny - what power is this That cruelly drives me onward without rest? My destiny says, "Look round!" I turn back and see It is I myself that is ever pushing me from behind.
Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved.
This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.
The most important lesson that man can learn from life, is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.
Those who think to reach God by running away from the world, when and where do they expect to meet him? We are reaching him here in this very spot, now at this very moment.
Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization.
The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart….. I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house….. But the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house; I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.