Quotes About Transcendence

It is easy to stand still and leave no trace, but it is hard to walk without touching the ground. (p. 53)

Si ascendero in coelum, tu illic es. Si descendero in infernum, ades.

Hope is the living heart of asceticism. It teaches us to deny ourselves and leave the world not because either we or the world are evil, but because unless a supernatural hope raises us above the things of time we are in no condition to make a perfect use either of our own or of the world's true goodness. But

He arrives at his own being as if it were an objective reality, that is to say he strives to become aware of himself as he would of some "thing" alien to himself. And he proves that the "thing" exists. He convinces himself: "I am therefore some thing." And then he goes on to convince himself that God, the infinite, the transcendent, is also a "thing," an "object," like other finite and limited objects of our thought!

JMJT February 1, 1942. Septuagesima.

There is a monastic outlook which is common to all those who have elected to question the value of a life submitted entirely to arbitrary secular presuppositions, dictated by social convention, and dedicated to the pursuit of temporal satisfactions which are perhaps only a mirage. Whatever may be the value of life in the world there have been, in all cultures, men who have claimed to find something they vastly prefer in solitude. (p. 10)

St. Eucherius on that sunrise! "Think how much more the splendor of the light will be for us in the future, if it shines upon us so brilliantly now. In what magnificent form will the light shine on eternal things, when it shines so beautifully now on what is passing away!

But in the actual experience of contemplation all other experiences are momentarily lost. They "die" to be born again on a higher level of life.

The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.

To be religious even in a personal way, you have to wake up and find your own portals to wonder and transcendence.

A man or a woman can inspire such deep fantasy and emotion that through the lovemaking embrace of a partners body we make break through the limits of the human condition to touch upon another level of reality.

The bird let loose in eastern skies, When hastening fondly home, Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies Where idle warblers roam; But high she shoots through air and light, Above all low delay, Where nothing earthly bounds her flight, Nor shadows dim her way.

You look until you see nothing tangible, and that is God.

I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.

As if the dead really do persist, even in a bottle of wine.

Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.

No, thought Oedipa, sad. As if their home cemetery in some way still did exist, in a land where you could somehow walk, and not need the East San Narciso Freeway, and bones still could rest in peace, nourishing ghosts of dandelions, no one to plow them up. As if the dead really do persist, even in a bottle of wine.

I want to break out – to leave this cycle of infection and death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would become.

The simpler explanation,' Emerson with a distinct uvular component in his Sigh, 'may be that none of you people has ever known a moment of Transcendence in his life, nor would recognize one did it walk up and bit yese in the Arse,— and in the long sorry Silence, grows the suspicion that Jesuits are but the latest instance of a true Christian passion evaporated away, leaving no more than the usual hollow desires for Authority and mindless O-bedience.

Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all question of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools.

They fly toward grace.

The heavens opened for the sunset to-night. When I had thought the day folded and sealed, came a burst of heavenly bright petals.

All else seemed sterile compared to what she witnessed in the woods.

I do not know Whether I spoke or heard The word That fills all silence.