“The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.”

—  Robinson Jeffers

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe." by Robinson Jeffers?
Robinson Jeffers photo
Robinson Jeffers 59
American poet 1887–1962

Related quotes

Meher Baba photo

“This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Message in Bombay (October 1922), p. 431.
Lord Meher (1986)
Context: This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination. In spite of so many discoveries, researches and scientific knowledge, the creation remains a great unsolved riddle.

Donna Tartt photo

“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation
into a harmony with the whole.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

47
Fireflies (1928)

Robinson Jeffers photo

“This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Letter to Sister Mary James Power (1 October 1934); published in The Wild God of the World : An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers (2003), edited by Albert Gelpi, p. 189; also partly quoted in the essay "Robinson Jeffers, Pantheist Poet" http://web.archive.org/20011119074326/members.aol.com/PHarri5642/jeffers.htm by John Courtney
Context: I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars, none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions — the world of spirits.
I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us.

Alexej von Jawlensky photo

“The whole of French art is a matter of seeing Nature as beautiful, very beautiful, in fact. But on the whole this is not enough. You have to create your own Nature – Van Gogh!”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Jawlensky is looking back on his encounter with French art through his voyage with Marianne Werefkin to Normandy and Paris, in 1903 when he discovered Van Gogh
1900 - 1935
Source: Expressionism: A Revolution in German Art, Dietmer Elger, Taschen, 2002, p. 166

Borís Pasternak photo

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

John Muir photo

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 1: Puget Sound and British Columbia
1910s

Robinson Jeffers photo

“Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"The Answer" (1936)
Context: Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

Hazrat Inayat Khan photo

“Divine sound is the cause of all manifestation. The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Related topics