Earthly Quotes - page 17
At the beginning of my present earthly existence I was put into touch with many people who said they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but were tied down, subjected, slaves of that brutal necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed down upon them so much, took way so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer. I heard that very often.
Mirra Alfassa
I don't want to be too hard on Islam here, for two reasons: firstly because I don't want to be murdered by some hysterical, self-righteous, carpet-chewing, book-burning muppet with shit for brains. And secondly, I do think we need to make allowances for Islam, because we have to remember Islam is quite a young religion. So, maybe right now it's just going through a difficult age, a little headstrong, full of itself, thinks it knows all the answers, but I'm sure it'll learn. I think years from now, a lot of intelligent Muslims will be looking back on all this Medievalism and Jihad nonsense with embarrassment and shame, like the Germans do with the Nazis, and maybe then we can all have a good laugh about it, but in the mean time I think that any religion that demands earthly vengeance and retribution for any reason is not really a religion at all, but an illness and should be treated as such.
Pat Condell
Max Beer, in his History of British Socialism, points out that Bacon looked for the happiness of mankind chiefly in the application of science and industry. But by now it is plain that if this alone were sufficient, we could all live in heaven tomorrow. Beer points out that More, on the other hand, looked to social reform and religious ethics to transform society; and it is equally plain that if the souls of men could be transformed without altering their material and institutional activities, Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism might have created an earthly paradise almost any time this last two thousand years. The truth is, as Beer sees, that these two conceptions are still at war with each other: idealism and science continue to function in separate compartments; and yet "the happiness of man on earth" depends upon their combination.
Lewis Mumford
The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate. The great white hope meets the great black hole; the mission to the heathen blends with the comforting myth of Florence Nightingale. As ever, the true address of the missionary is to the self-satisfaction of the sponsor and the donor, and not to the needs of the downtrodden. Helpless infants, abandoned derelicts, lepers and the terminally ill are the raw material for demonstrations of compassion. They are in no position to complain, and their passivity and abjection is considered a sterling trait. It is time to recognize that the world's leading exponent of this false consolation is herself a demagogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.
Christopher Hitchens
Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. True Work is the necessity of poor humanity's earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundreths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked.
Herman Melville
Until a man's earthly life finishes its course, up to the very departure of the soul from the body, the struggle between sin and righteousness continues within him. However, high a spiritual and moral state one might achieve, a gradual or even headlong and deep fall into the abyss of sin is always possible. Therefore, communion of the holy Body and Blood of Christ, which strengthens our contact with Him and refreshes us with the living streams of the grace of the Holy Spirit flowing through the Body of the Church, is necessary for everyone.
John of Shanghai and San Francisco
Kandinsky and Klee: the two artists.. ..have been named together more and more frequently.. .Since: is it supposed to be a mere coincidence that, in quiet, remote Dessau.. ..two creative spirits equally liberated from the burden of earthly problems – connecting East and West – live under one roof, or is it a wake-up call, a sign of what is to come?!
Wassily Kandinsky
The Zealots ... want to initiate a holy war and to establish within a human framework a Kingdom of God which is an earthly kingdom and which at the same time takes the place of the Roman Empire. Jesus sees that use of this method places one on exactly the same plane as every other totalitarian State. This is also an abandonment of the New Testament expectation of a kingdom which is really God's, and not a human kingdom. If the Zealots succeed in realising their ideal, it will be a totalitarian State of the most extreme form; one making divine claims.
Oscar Cullmann
The true Christian is not obliged to renounce the things of this world or to lessen his natural abilities. On the contrary, inasmuch as he incorporates them into his normal life in a disciplined manner, he develops and perfects them; he thereby ennobles the natural life itself, supplying efficacious values to it not only of the spiritual and eternal world but also of the material and earthly world.
Edith Stein
Everything which the ego is able to unfold within itself must give birth to love. The all-embracing archetype of love is set forth in the revelation of... the Christ Mystery. Through Him the germ of love is planted in the innermost core of the human being; and from this starting-point it must flow through the whole of evolution. Just as the wisdom previously formed manifests in the forces of the earthly sense-world, in the "elementary forces” of to-day, so love itself will manifest in the future, in all phenomena, as the new "elementary force.”.
Rudolf Steiner
