“We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.”

—  Joseph Joubert

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 31, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a dishearteni…" by Joseph Joubert?
Joseph Joubert photo
Joseph Joubert 253
French moralist and essayist 1754–1824

Related quotes

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

17 May 1940
My Day (1935–1962)

Louise Erdrich photo

“When every inch of the world is known, sleep may be the only wilderness that we have left.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Source: The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year

Philip Pullman photo

“As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two — how shall I put it — renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

The Master of Jordan College to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

Carl Friedrich Gauss photo

“One is forced to the view, for which there is so much evidence even though without rigorous scientific basis, that besides this material world another, second, purely spiritual world order exists, with just as many diversities as that in which we live-—we are to participate in it.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 349

Franz Kafka photo

“There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

54
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.
One can disintegrate the world by means of very strong light. For weak eyes the world becomes solid, for still weaker eyes it seems to develop fists, for eyes weaker still it becomes shamefaced and smashes anyone who dares to gaze upon it.

Vera Stanley Alder photo

“Can we grasp that the only requirement in order that this may be so is organization, a combined world organization founded upon the spiritual principle of sharing and cooperation; and that this would change the world from the state it is now in to a comparative Heaven?”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

Northrop Frye photo

“Art is not simply an identity of illusion and reality, but a counter-illusion: its world is a material world, but the material of an intelligible spiritual world.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

1:73
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Nature and the Greeks (1954)
Context: We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them.

Related topics