Of course we can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone should behave. But it is not our task to create an ideal. It's our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.
There is no treasure the which may be compared unto a faithful friend; Gold some decayeth, and worldly wealth consumeth, and wasteth in the winde; But love once planted in a perfect and pure minde indureth weale and woe; The frownes of fortune, come they never so unkinde, cannot the same overthrowe.
If a thing happens once, it can happen again. If any human being has ever realised perfection, we too can do so. If we cannot become perfect here and now, we never can in any state or heaven or condition we may imagine.
Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.
Thus with most careful devotion Thus with precise attention To detail, interfering preparation Of that which is already prepared Men lighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation.
... the good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.
It's funny, because my last record was a lot about isolation and people living in separate worlds that other people can't even understand, which drug addiction is the perfect negative example of.
Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it.
You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
The ultimate design of the Mysteries ... was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, ... a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good.
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.