‘What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’ — Friedrich Nietzsche
‘We should fix ourselves firmly in the presence of God by conversing all the time with Him...we should feed our soul with a lofty conception of God and from that derive great joy in being his. We should put life in our faith. We should give ourselves utterly to God in pure abandonment, in temporal and spiritual matters alike, and find contentment in the doing of His will,whether he takes us through sufferings or consolations.’ — Brother Lawrence
‘Still soaring, as if some celestial call
Impell’d it to yon heaven’s sublimest hall;
High as the clouds, in pomp and power arrayed,
Enshrined in strength, in majesty displayed;
All the soul’s secret thoughts it seems to move,
Beneath it trembles, while it frowns above.’ — Goethe
We commonly hear people use words like feeling, or emotion to give a label to some large, sweeping process that they find themselves undergoing or engaged in. When we are seeing a new girl, and if it begins to take root in the heart, we then enter into this realm, and suddenly find ourselves alive again upon a buoyant force—we think to ourselves, yes, this is life! As we march upon the horizon of romance, with eyes cast heavenwide, and a stoic repose assembled on our face, we ascribe all of this to feeling. Upon this feeling, we enter into oaths, relationships, and sacred pacts; all things that have long-term consequences and which tether ourselves to a self-ordained flight path. Perhaps this is good for the soul—and perhaps it is not.
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