Does he love me? “You’re asking the wrong question. What you need to know is are you in a position to give him the love he needs. And whatever happens or doesn’t happen will be equally gratifying, knowing that you are capable of love is enough. If it isn’t him, it will be someone else… Don’t try to keep a safe distance so as to see what happens. Don’t wait to be certain before you take a step. What you give, you will receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you least expect.
Only when your hearts are empty of the things of the mind, is there love. Then you will know what it is to love without separation, without distance, without time, without fear.
I hate the uncultivated crowd and keep them at a distance. Favour me by your tongues (keep silence).
[Lat., Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Favete linguis.]
Science boasts of the distance of its stars; of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it has to speak. But poetry and religion always insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness of the things with which they are concerned. Always the Kingdom of Heaven is "At Hand."
He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320
Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.
There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
It is sometimes said that because of our past we, as a people, expect too much and set our sights too high. That is not the way I see it. Rather it seems to me that throughout my life in politics our ambitions have steadily shrunk. Our response to disappointment has not been to lengthen our stride but to shorten the distance to be covered. But with confidence in ourselves and in our future what a nation we could be!
We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate thier virtue or vice by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath ever moment....One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zsig zag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficent distance and it straightens itslef to the average tendency.
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself.
I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul. Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul. Spirit is a land of high white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances. There is soul music, soul food, and soul love... People need to climb the mountain not simple because it is there But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.