Quotes About Encounter

So long as you "have" yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things.

All real life is meeting.

No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.

Spirit is not in the I but between I and You.

What, then, does one experience of the You? -- Nothing at all. For one does not experience it. -- What, then, does one know of the You? -- Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars.

Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation.

The basic word I-You can only be spoken with one's whole being. The basic word I-It can never be spoken with one's whole being.

One who truly meets the world goes out also to God.

When we encounter another individual truly as a person, not as an object for use, we become fully human

All real living is meeting.

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

All actual life is encounter.

The missionaries ate the local food. Sometimes, as in the case of one New Zealand tribe whose favorite recipe called for Anglicans, the locals ate the missionaries.

There is a paradox here: the purpose of a great number of the things we call 'works of art' was and is religious. But when we encounter them in the circumstances for which they were made our reaction – or at least mine – is to feel awkward, a bit embarrassed at being there under false pretences. This is, perhaps, the mirror image of the bewilderment felt by a true believer at finding a sacred image in a museum, lined up with pictures of landscapes and kitchen tables.

No one learns only by staring in the mirror. We all learn—and are sometimes transformed—by encountering differences that challenge our own experience and assumptions.

Before you can cry to God and seek him God must come to you and must have found you

I was halfway between my home and the cookhouse when a mist of cloud began to creep across the early-risen moon. It darkened the ground enough that I did not see a small depression, and I stumbled. Immedietly I was steadied by some force I could not see, and then, as if the coming night clotted into a visible personage, I perceived that Lord Death was beside me.

At that moment a word47 issued from the height. As Judas was standing there, he saw how the word came [down]. He asked the word, "Why have you come down?

the simple shorthand 'Roman conquest' can obscure a wide range of perspectives, motivations and aspirations on every side of the encounter.

You don't know a woman until you have met her in court.

Whenever I meet with anything agreeable in this world it surprises me so much -- and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested in one way or the other) that I go on wondering for a week to come.

St. Peter scold me saying son, where have you been? And he saw me with you and asked why are you with that person? and I said to him sorry St. Peter, I though it was heaven.

For suddenly, I saw you there And through foggy London town The sun was shining everywhere...

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.