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| He drank again.
"By all that's wonderful it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself — or is it youth alone? Who can tell? Bu you here — you all had something out of life: money, love — whatever one gets on shore — and, tell me, wasn't that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks — and sometimes a chance to feel your strength — that only— what you all regret?"
And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected it already gone — has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash — together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions. | | |
| If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.
-Mark Twain | | |
| Now the divine nature, as it is in itself, according to its essence, transcends every act of comprehensive knowledge, and it cannot be approached or attained by our speculation. Man has never discovered a faculty to comprehend the incomprehensible; nor have we ever been able to devise an intellectual technique for grasping the inconceivable. […] Yet it is clear that the Lord does not deceive us when He promises that the pure of heart shall see God. (Matt 5:8) […] The Lord does not say that it is blessed to know something about God, but rather to possess God in oneself: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. By this I do not think He means that the man who purifies the eye of his soul will enjoy an immediate vision of God […] this teaches us that the man who purifies his heart of every creature and every passionate impulse will see the image of the divine nature in his own beauty. […]
All of you mortals […] do not despair at never being able to behold the degree of the knowledge of God which you can attain. For when God made you, He at once endowed your nature with this perfection. […] You must then wash away, by a life of virtue, the dirt that came to cling to your heart like plaster, and then your divine beauty will once again shine forth. […]
When your mind is untainted by any evil, free of passion, purified of all stain, then you will be blessed because your eye is clear. Then because you have been purified you will perceive things that are invisible to the unpurified […] And what is this vision? It is purity, holiness, simplicity, and other such brilliant reflections of the nature of God; for it is in these that God is seen.
[From From Glory to Glory: Texts from St Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, J Daniélou and H Masurillo.] | | |
| "Oh, you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it; you may be sure that the highest moment of his happiness was, perhaps, exactly three days before the discovery of the New World, when the mutinous crew in their despair almost turned the ship back to Europe, right around! The New World is not the point here, it can just as well perish. Columbus dies having seen very little of it and in fact not knowing what he had discovered. The point is in life, in life alone—in discovering it, constantly and eternally, not at all in the discovery itself!"
"Here the whole of life stands before us and a countless number of ramifications that are hidden from us. The best chess player, the sharpest of them, can calculate ten moves ahead, was written about as a wonder. And how many moves are there, and how much is unknown to us? In sowing your seed, in sowing your 'charity,' your good deed in whatever form it takes, you give away part of your person and receive into yourself part of another's; you mutually commune in each other, a little more attention, and you will be rewarded with knowledge, with the most unexpected discoveries. You will be bound, finally, to look at your work as science, it will take in the whole of your life and maybe fill the whole of it. On the other hand, all your thoughts, all the seeds you have sown, which you may already have forgotten, will take on flesh and grown; what was received from you will be passed on to someone else. And how do you know what share you will have in the future outcome of human destiny?"
"Indeed, there is nothing more vexing, for instance, than to be rich, of respectable family, of decent appearance, of rather good education, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time to have no talent, no particularity, no oddity even, not a single idea of one's own, to be decidedly 'like everyone else.'"
"He was a young man with envious and impulsive desires and, it seemed, had been born with frayed nerves. He mistook the impulsiveness of his desires for their strength. With his passionate desire to distinguish himself, he was sometimes ready for a most reckless leap; but when it came to the point of making the reckless leap, our hero always proved too clever to venture upon it. This was killing him." | | |
| Behold, the Master has entrusted you with the talent, O my soul!
Receive the gift with fear!
Repay the One who gave by giving to the poor,
and gain the Lord as your friend,
so that when He comes in glory,
You may stand at His right hand and hear His blessed voice:
“Enter, my servant, into the joy of your Lord!”
Though I have gone astray, make me worthy of this, O Savior,
through Your great mercy! | | |
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