Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 465
“Beside the staff of life,
taken and fashioned from the heavy earth,
beside our marriage, work, and war
the free man, too, will live and grow towards the sun.
Not the ripe fruit alone —
blossom is lovely, too.
Does blossom only serve the fruit,
or does fruit only serve the blossom —
who knows?
But both are given to us.”
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer 161
German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi 1906–1945Related quotes
“Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.”
“Youth is a blossom whose fruit is love; happy is he who plucks it after watching it slowly ripen.”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Chance (1947), p. 277
“Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.”
(19th January 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.2
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822
Section 9
Letter to a Priest (1951)
Context: Besides, it is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin; and she has gone about uprooting the other continents from the sixteenth century onwards. Missionary zeal has not Christianized Africa, Asia and Oceania, but has brought these territories under the cold, cruel and destructive domination of the white race, which has trodden down everything. It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.