Source: Quartet
Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 11 “Mother’s People” section I (p. 337)
Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 111
Context: God can be realized through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole.
“Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 3
Sec. 23
The Antichrist (1888)
Context: Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world.
Introduction
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)
Context: In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics".
The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.
“The one thing that is more dangerous than true ignorance is the illusion of understanding.”
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 57, “Becoming Philosophical” (p. 226)
“But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year,
And a sphere.”
Fable http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/fable.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)
