They can never have known old monks, wise, shrewd, unerring in judgment, and yet aglow with passionate insight, so very tender in ...their humanity. What miracle enables these semi-lunatics, these prisoners of their own dreams, these sleepwalkers, apparently to enter more deeply each day into the pain of others? An odd sort of dream, an unusual opiate which, far from turning him back into himself and isolating him from his fellows, unites the individual with mankind in the spirit of universal charity!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stick ...out above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence--his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms--in short, his hereditary cowardice.... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will... be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am succeeding quite well in my work and the future looks well. What special mission is God preparing me for? Cutting off all ear...thly ties and isolating me as it were.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »