“There is not a single striving or pursuit or yearning of the human heart, even in the midst of the most sensual pleasures, that is not a dim grasping after the Infinite.”
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 4, p. 53
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Fulton J. Sheen78
Catholic bishop and television presenter 1895–1979Related quotes
“Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.”
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Two in the Campagna, xii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Sarah Doudney (1841–1926) English novelist and poet
Poem: Things that never die, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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2013, Brandenburg Gate Speech (June 2013)
Context: But the fact that we can stand here today, along the fault line where a city was divided, speaks to an eternal truth: No wall can stand against the yearning of justice, the yearnings for freedom, the yearnings for peace that burns in the human heart.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 21, June 28, 1941.
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Socrates, p. 125
Valéry alludes to a famous pensée of Blaise Pascal: 'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces affrights me.' (Pensées, no. 201).
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
“… and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.”
William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads
Source: Lyrical Ballads
Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist
Variant: It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.