"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Context: But whatever theories we have, we have at last to be governed by the facts. We are in a world where vice, deformity, weakness, and disease are hereditary. In the presence of this immense and solemn truth rises the religion of the body. Every man should refuse to increase the misery of this world.
“Age is deformed, youth unkind,
We scorn their bodies, they our mind.”
Chrestoleros (1598), Bk.7, Epigram 9
“… humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world.”
Variant: humanity is a cancer on the body of the world
Source: Pretties
Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light
Context: It is not enough to speak; you must know words. When you have said, "I am in pain," or when you have said, "I am right," you have said nothing in reality, you have only spoken to yourself. The real presence of truth is not in every word of truth, because of the wear and tear of words, and the fleeting multiplicity of arguments. One must have the gift of persuasion, of leaving to truth its speaking simplicity, its solemn unfoldings. It is not I who will be able to speak from the depths of myself. The attention of men dazzles me when it rises before me. The very nakedness of paper frightens me and drowns my looks. Not I shall embellish that whiteness with writing like light. I understand of what a great tribune's sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it. Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come, — but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my heart, to speak French.
“The sheer immensity of the human self as envisioned by the world's religions is awesome.”
The World's Religions (1991)
Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan
[The Goals Program. How to Stay Motivated, Volume III, chapter 5, Zig Ziglar]
Attributed
“We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions.”
Preface
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)
Context: We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.
The Church in Ecuador officially launches the National Mission: “The Church is in need of a good house-cleaning.” http://www.fides.org/en/news/24075-AMERICA_ECUADOR_The_Church_in_Ecuador_officially_launches_the_National_Mission_The_Church_is_in_need_of_a_good_house_cleaning (28 April 2009)
Source: Contributions to the history and improvement of the german universities - A history of pedagogy; volume 4 (1855), p. 99
