Ida Friederike Görres: Most

Ida Friederike Görres was Austrian writer and noble. Explore interesting quotes on most.
Ida Friederike Görres: 114   quotes 0   likes

“I'm afraid I do believe that all earthly love can die - since man is mortal, why not also his most human feature? - and for me pretensions such as love that dies was never love, etc. belong to schoolgirls' albums.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Love

“A happy childhood means - or ought to mean - that one's first experience of the world is a true experience - not yet comprehensive, of course, yet comprehending the prime reality, so that it becomes an experience of an essential order which thenceforward will serve as a basis of comparison, in whose light all future falsification, all disorder, will be recognised as wrong and invalid. A happy childhood means above all a loved child. Because Thérèse was a happy child, her beginnings could contain perfection. Because she was a loved child, she received from the beginning the knowledge that others must struggle towards so consciously, with such difficulty, by painfully strenuous detours: the simple truth that to so many of us seems the most incredible and amazing lesson of religion: that we can be loved without having deserved it: that grace comes first.. It is bliss simply to be someone's child, a child of a father, of a mother, living, moving and having its being in a love which is unmerited, unmeritable, anticipatory, unconditional and immutable. On this basic mystery and reality Thérèse's childhood was built. This was the source of her subsequent doctrine of the way of spiritual childhood.”

Ida Friederike Görres

The Hidden Face p. 48-49.

Love , Truth , World , Religion

“I'm reading a very quaint American book, The Power of Positive Thinking, written, I'd suppose, by a sectarian minister, presumably of Methodist dye. (Norman Vincent Peale).. He's full of stories of prayers heard - and extols the power of prayer.."Before leaving for an important business conference I brace myself with texts like 'If God be for us, who can be against us?'… Then I stalk into the conference room, sure of my victory, and carry off the most marvellous deal.." This, in essence is the burden of the whole book. That's what people call Christian optimism. But it's wasted on us - we've been spoilt for this sort of thing… But isn't it rather self suggestion than authentic religious impulse? It doesn't seem to have dawned on him that suffering, disappointment, defeat or loss might also have some point too, or that God's designs could sometimes be hidden…”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

God , People , Books , Disappointment

“I'm reading a biography of St John Baptist de la Salle - Extraordinary what educational insights and experiments have existed already - and what has been forgotten!. That reformatory, for instance, which he founded on the most amazing principles somewhere around 1680…The young delinquents were detained in solitary confinement to begin with, being promoted later.. to community life.. But in their single cells they were given flowers and plants to cultivate and singing birds to breed! The prisoners took their meals together with the Brothers, and each of the boys in solitary confinement was entrusted to one particular Brother…The Jansenists were bitter opponents of the Brothers, for in all his schools de la Salle laid great stress on frequent Communion.. They did their best to oppose him personally and to hinder his work. The French Revolution wrecked his Institute, some of the Brothers were executed, others emigrated.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Life , Education , School , Boy

“The close affinity between sexual Eros and deceit is very startling - as in infatuation, infidelity and jealousy: " Quoniam lumbi mei repleti sunt illusionibus. " For, isolated, Eros is in every sense the most treacherous counterfeit of love, sending a continual flow of self-deception and delusion throughout the world, etc.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights p. 33 Diaries 1951.

Love , World , Jealousy , Sense

“I've just finished a (for me) very important book about the parents (Louis Martin and Zélie Martin) of the Little Flower.. It confirms my thesis 100 per cent: that everything claimed by her super-heralds as her direct inspiration, her unique originality, in fact stemmed from inheritance, upbringing and repetition…Most interesting for me is the recognition how alien and remote this bourgeois piety of the late nineteenth century has become, even for cultivated contemporary Catholic writers - a veritable terra incognita; otherwise this so wide-spread legend of Thérèse's uniqueness could never have grown up.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights (Letters 1951-59).

Books , Flowers , Parent

“I've come to the end of von Hügel's voluminous work on Catherine of Genoa. For such outlay in erudition, it's basically an unrewarding book (for me!), but full of interesting side-lights…Curious, for instance, that Catherine, always universally cited as the recognised authority, the most important and competent witness to the nature of Purgatory, should actually never have had a vision of it - neither as shewing nor as visiting in spirit, as other mystics did.. Her statements are pure conclusions, analogies, based on her own spiritual experiences of suffering and bliss: "So that's what it must be like in Purgatory!"”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Books , Nature , Light , Suffering

“I'm reading Kristin Lavransdatter again - it's one of the greatest poetic books, and the most powerful portrayal of medieval Christendom I know…. I must admit that it makes me cry every time - because it's so real, so true, reaching to the depths of human nature, touching one to the quick.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Books , Nature , Time , Reading

“Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights p. 82 Diaries 1951-1952

Friendship , People , Change , Reading

“Legenda Aurea. To think that there's no Catholic edition of this most Catholic book!… Richard Benz sees it as epic and myth of the Middle Ages, exact parallel to the Gothic cathedrals. Sunk into oblivion with the epoch, rediscovered through the history of art, in the countless painters inspired by the Legend. Wonderful, costly and beautiful - but belonging utterly to the past, monument, museum: venerable, interesting, imposing - tout à fait passé.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Diaries 1957-59

Books , Age , Beauty , Art

“Trochu's Vianney book makes me shudder. Positively frightening - and the saint too. The first time I read it I was quite horrified…Actually he is a second Simeon Stylites - and how hard and stern he is - and not only against himself: he would excommunicate his parishioners if they even once went dancing or drinking - like the most rigorous Puritan.. For him sin involved personal, direct single combat with Satan…But there's no glove to Vianney's peasant fist. He's really gruesome.”

Ida Friederike Görres

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Books , Drink , Time , Reading