“the search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.”
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
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John O'Donohue 44
Irish writer, priest and philosopher 1956–2008Related quotes
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Awakening of Western thought will not be complete until that thought steps outside itself and comes to an understanding with the search for a world-view as this manifests itself in the thought of mankind as a whole. We have too long been occupied with the developing series of our own philosophical systems, and have taken no notice of the fact that there is a world-philosophy of which our Western philosophy is only a part. If, however, one conceives philosophy as being a struggle to reach a view of the world as a whole, and seeks out the elementary convictions which are to deepen it and give it a sure foundation, one cannot avoid setting our own thought face to face with that of the Hindus, and of the Chinese in the Far East. … Our Western philosophy, if judged by its own latest pronouncements, is much naiver than we admit to ourselves, and we fail to perceive this only because we have acquired the art of expressing what is simple in a pedantic way.
“Rest springs from strife and dissonant chords beget
Divinest harmonies.”
Love's Suicide, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“A man searching for paradise lost can seem a fool to those who never sought the other world.”
"A Lost Chord".
Legends and Lyrics: Second Series (1861)
360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations
Letter to A.S. Suvorin (May 15, 1889)
Letters
Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, "Quotation".
Misattributed, Isaac D'Israeli
1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Context: I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.