“One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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Friedrich Nietzsche 655
German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and cl… 1844–1900Related quotes
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 83.
The Graves of a Household http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/records/graves.html, st. 1.
“For the spiritual power of a sacrament is like light in this way: it is both received pure by those to be enlightened, and if it passes through the impure it is not defiled.”
Spiritalis enim virtus Sacramenti ita est ut lux: et ab illuminandis pura excipitur, et si per immundos transeat, non inquinatur.
Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate V on John 1:33, §15; translation by R. Willems
Compare:
The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.
Diogenes Laërtius, Lib. vi. section 63
A very weighty argument is this — namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering.
Julian, in Upon the Sovereign Sun http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_1_sun.htm, (c. December 362), as translated by C. W. King in Julian the Emperor (1888) - Full text online http://www.archive.org/details/julianemperorco00juligoog
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book II (1605)
Source: 1960s, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966, p. 8
Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, "Spirit expounds"
Translated by Arthur Waley
“It is reported that there was then such perfect peace in Britain, wheresoever the dominion of King Edwin extended, that, as is still proverbially said, a woman with her newborn babe might walk throughout the island, from sea to sea, without receiving any harm.”
Tanta eo tempore pax in Britannia fuisse perhibetur, ut, sicut usque hodie in proverbio dicitur, etiamsi mulier una cum recens nato parvulo vellet totam perambulare insulam a mari ad mare, nullo se laedente valeret.
Book II, chapter 16
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)
“To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.”
As quoted in Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom : A Collection of 10,000 Powerful Quotations (2003) by Andy Zubko, p. 184
William Lai (2018) cited in " Premier visits coal-fired power plant to alleviate public concerns http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201803180015.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 18 March 2018.