“I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it.”
As quoted in Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman who Defied Hitler (2009) by Frank McDonough
Context: I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it. Unprepared, given over to childish trivialities, it could be taken by surprise when the great hour comes and find that, for the sake of piffling pleasures, the one great joy has been missed. I am aware of this, but my heart is not. It seems unteachable; it continues its dreaming … always wavering between joy and depression.
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Sophie Scholl 17
White Rose member 1921–1943Related quotes
“Love I get so lost, sometimes.
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart.”
In Your Eyes
Song lyrics, So (1986)
Context: Love I get so lost, sometimes.
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart.
When I want to run away,
I drive off in my car.
But whichever way I go,
I come back to the place you are.
“I know love is eternal, so also are folly, lies and roses.”
In this world our hopes for the best are so often disappointed
Love is eternal. That is its terror and its final beauty. Love never ends. The joy may go out of it, and in time even the pain may end. But it lingers like a living thing and follows you every moment of your life.
The Silver Wolf
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
“Ah!”
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Context: How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.