Section 1 : The Meaning of Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: The divine in man is our sole ground for believing that there is anything divine in the universe outside of man. Man is the revealer of the divine.
At bottom, the world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a joy that includes all the pain, includes it and transforms it and transcends it.
The Light of the World is a light that is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and transfigured.
“There is darkness in light, there is pain in joy, and there are thorns on the rose.”
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Cate Tiernan 25
American novelist 1961Related quotes
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
“Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”
Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Life and Destiny (1913)
"The Rose" (published c. 1648). Compare: "Flower of all hue, and without thorn the rose", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book iv. line 256.; "Every rose has it's thorn", Poison, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
Hesperides (1648)
“A stranger's rose is but a thorn.”
In Alien Lands, translated by Leah W. Leonard.
Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.