Just Like That: Talks on Sufism (1993)
Context: Just a few days ago a man came to see me and he said, "I am a humble man. I am just like the dust on your feet. I have been trying for almost twenty years to achieve higher consciousness, but I have been a failure. Why can't I attain?" And on and on he went. Every sentence started with I. If the grammar allowed, every sentence would have ended with I. And if everything was allowed, every sentence would have consisted only of I's. "I etcetera, I etcetera, I etcetera," it went on and on. You are filled too much. There is no room, no space for God to enter in you. You are too crowded. A thousand I's milling inside — they don't leave any space for anything to enter in you.
“The generality labour under the delusion, that when they have lighted and filled their rooms, they have done their all. They never were more in error. Lighting is much—crowding is much also—but there lacks “something more exquisite still.” This something the countess possessed in its perfection. Any can assemble a crowd, but few can make it mingle.”
The Monthly Magazine
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
Perfect Boredom http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/perfect-boredom/
From the poems written in English
Aussitôt qu'une pensée vraie est entrée dans notre esprit, elle jette une lumière qui nous fait voir une foule d'autres objets que nous n'apercevions pas auparavant.
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards.
“If thou make any law or establish any custom for the general good, be the first to submit thyself thereto; then does a people show more regard for justice nor refuse submission when it has seen their author obedient to his own laws. The world shapes itself after its ruler's pattern, nor can edicts sway men's minds so much as their monarch's life; the unstable crowd ever changes along with the prince.”
In commune iubes si quid censesque tenendum, <br/>primus iussa subi: tunc observantior aequi <br/>fit populus nec ferre negat, cum viderit ipsum <br/>auctorem parere sibi. componitur orbis <br/>regis ad exemplum, nec sic inflectere sensus <br/>humanos edicta valent quam vita regentis.
In commune iubes si quid censesque tenendum,
primus iussa subi: tunc observantior aequi
fit populus nec ferre negat, cum viderit ipsum
auctorem parere sibi. componitur orbis
regis ad exemplum, nec sic inflectere sensus
humanos edicta valent quam vita regentis.
Panegyricus de Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti, lines 296-301 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Claudian/De_IV_Consulatu_Honorii*.html#296.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Poems (1917), The Great Minimum
Context: It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.