“Too true it is! our mortal state
With bliss is never satiate.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1331–1332 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
On the Last Day
Context: In this life we never behold the true state of our interior: our attention is engaged by the few serious sentiments with which we are occasionally animated; and the judgment which we form of ourselves is generally influenced by the last impressions which are made upon our minds.
“Too true it is! our mortal state
With bliss is never satiate.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1331–1332 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)
Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe
Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 10, Tames Goats.
Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint
First Mansions, Ch. 2 : The Human Soul, as translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook (1911), revised and edited by Fr. Benedict Zimmerman
Interior Castle (1577)
Context: We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.
“Behold the pre-prophetic symbols of the planes of Never.
Behold, behold this thisness!
This isness.”
Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader
"Tomorrow is Never" (1972), p. 252
Sun Ra : The Immeasurable Equation (2005)
“Behold the true father of his country.”
Ecce parens verus patriae.
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia
Book IX, line 601 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist
On receiving the "Family of Man" Award from the Protestant Council of the City of New York (28 October 1964)
“We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold.”
John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic
Quoted in Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1912) by Evelyn Underhill, p. 506