"Four Things," Poems, vol. 1 (vol. 9 of The Works of Henry Van Dyke) (1920).
“God cannot be realized without love. Yes, sincere love.”
[A Short Life of the Holy Mother, 88]
Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 3 (p. 9)
“Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love.”
Variant: Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.
Source: Life of Pi
Assessing St. Augustine's perspectives in "Augustus to Augustine", p. 37
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i. e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.
“Sincerity is the end and beginning of things; without sincerity there would be nothing.”
The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean
Context: Sincerity is the end and beginning of things; without sincerity there would be nothing. On this account, the superior man regards the attainment of sincerity as the most excellent thing.
