Quotes About Transcendence

The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct. To be modern is to be free to choose. What is chosen does not matter; the meaning is in the choice itself. There is no sacred order, no other world, no fixed virtues and permanent truths. There is only here and now and the eternal flame of human desire. Volo ergo sum—I want, therefore I am.

if one's religion is to mean anything, if it is to last, it has to stand outside of time and place. Its truths have to be transcendent. And though we moderns have to find a way to make the tradition livable in our own situations, we must never forget that we don't judge the religion; the religion judges us. To be blunt, a god that is no bigger than our own desires is not God at all, but a divinized rationalization for self-worship.

Religious Man, who lived according to belief in transcendent principles that ordered human life around communal purposes, had given way to Psychological Man, who believed that there was no transcendent order and that life's purpose was to find one's own way experimentally.

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct.

La nueva era derrocó el modelo aristotélico y cristiano del cosmos, que proponía una estructura jerárquica de la realidad en la que las cosas existían orgánicamente a través de su relación con Dios, y lo sustituyó por el de un universo mecánico regido por las leyes de la naturaleza, no necesariamente basado en lo trascendente.

Music is a wonderful example of something that's in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

that if she clears her mind down to the deepest level then three things will happen: she'll never be afraid; it will be easier to love people; and it will be easier to die.

But, modest though it was, the building had always felt to Paolo like an anteroom of heaven.

Socrates immersed himself in the cutting-edge intellectual work of his day, then transcended it. He took advantage of the fact that the most exciting thinkers in the Western world were drawn to Athens. He sought them out, learned what they had to teach, then challenged what he had learned to enhance his own understanding.

But the central self is open and aware because it need only be the unique voice that it is, an expression that transcends the personality that got it out of childhood alive.

She had felt the movement of something vaster, impersonal yet personal, in her life. She thought that maybe people in contact with that nameless greatness had a way of catching at the edges, a way of being pulled along or even entering this thing beyond experience.

Donna Leon. But she also liked history, so I handed over Jacqueline Winspear and John Banville. A little questioning changed the trajectory. I extolled Kate Atkinson and P. D. James, suggested Transcription. She mentioned liking Children of Men. I mentioned The Handmaid's Tale, which of course she had already read, then I catapulted over to my most special lady, Octavia Butler. One of my all-time favorite characters is bitter, angry, tender Lilith, who has lots of transcendent

In fatigue and solitude men emanate the divine.

At the bottom of all music you have to hear the tune without notes, made just for us, the tune of Death.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

At sunset the little soul that had come with the dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it

The white majesty of death had fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train ~ Keynes

There are, indeed, things that are inexpressible. They show themselves. They are what is mystical.

I ought to have ... become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth.