Quotes About Essence

Il faut abandonner l'illusion qu'elle [la philosophie] pourrait retenir l'essence dans la finitude de ses déterminations.

How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.

Be sure that whatever you are is you.

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

Water flows from high in the mountains Water runs deep in the Earth Miraculously, water comes to us, And sustains all life.

To be simple is to be great. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the essence of all games. Games are a way of using time for people who cannot bear the stroking starvation of withdrawal and yet whose NOT OK position makes the ultimate form of relatedness, intimacy, impossible.

I answer that, The truth of this question is quite clear if we consider the divine simplicity. For it was shown above (Q[3], A[3]) that the divine simplicity requires that in God essence is the same as "suppositum," which in intellectual substances is nothing else than person. But a difficulty seems to arise from the fact that while the divine persons are multiplied, the essence nevertheless retains its unity.

Thence it follows that in God essence is not really distinct from person; and yet that the persons are really distinguished from each other. For person, as above stated (Q[29], A[4]), signifies relation as subsisting in the divine nature. But relation as referred to the essence does not differ therefrom really, but only in our way of thinking; while as referred to an opposite relation, it has a real distinction by virtue of that opposition. Thus there are one essence and three persons.

Hence, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. x), "things which are diverse are absolutely distinct, but things which are different differ by something.

Reply to Objection 3: As man is more perfect than other animals, he has more intrinsic operations than other animals, because his perfection is something composite. Hence the angels, who are more perfect and more simple, have fewer intrinsic operations than man, for they have no imagination, or feeling, or the like. In God there exists only one real operation---that is, His essence

The same Reply can be given to OBJ 2. For an essential term applied to the Father does not exclude the Son or the Holy Ghost, by reason of the unity of essence. Hence we must understand that in the text quoted the term "no one" [*Nemo = non-homo, i.e. no man] is not the same as "no man," which the word itself would seem to signify (for the person of the Father could not be excepted), but is taken according to the usual way of speaking in a distributive sense, to mean any rational nature.

Agere sequitur esse.

Reply to Objection 1: The reason why God has no name, or is said to be above being named, is because His essence is above all that we understand about God, and signify in word. Reply to Objection 2: Because we know and name God from creatures, the names we attribute to God signify what belongs to material creatures, of which the knowledge is natural to us.

Reply to Objection 3: From effects not proportionate to the cause no perfect knowledge of that cause can be obtained. Yet from every effect the existence of the cause can be clearly demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from His effects; though from them we cannot perfectly know God as He is in His essence.

All human beings must perform according to their nature.

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laugther, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning.

What we call pure or impure, is not with her the final question. Not how much chaff is in you; but whether you have any wheat. Pure? I might say to many a man: Yes, you are pure; pure enough; but you are chaff,—insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formality; you never were in contact with the great heart of the Universe at all; you are properly neither pure nor impure; you are nothing, Nature has no business with you.