
A Village Tale. from The London Literary Gazette: 6th December 1823 Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch IV.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
A Village Tale. from The London Literary Gazette: 6th December 1823 Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch IV.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Paradise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“The best way to know life is to love many things”
1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Variant: I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
Context: I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakable faith.
“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”
As quoted in In Passing: Condolences and Complaints on Death, Dying, and Related Disappointments (2005) by Jon Winokur, p. 144