
“Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders?”
The Roycraft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (1923)
“Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders?”
Managing, Chapter Three (Experience and Cash), p. 39.
“What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?”
Wie? ist der Mensch nur ein Fehlgriff Gottes? Oder Gott nur ein Fehlgriff des Menschen?
Maxims and Arrows, 7
Variant: Which? Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders?
Source: Twilight of the Idols (1888)
“The man who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success.”
Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
“Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!”
Source: 1840s, Chartism (1840), Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
Context: O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!
Source: On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960), Ch. 1 : Religious Authority and Mysticism
Context: We shall start from the assumption that a mystic, insofar as he participates actively in the religious life of a community, does not act in the void. It is sometimes said, to be sure, that mystics, with their personal striving for transcendence, live outside of and above the historical level, that their experience is unrelated to historical experience. Some admire this ahistorical orientation, others condemn it as a fundamental weakness of mysticism. Be that as it may, what is of interest to the history of religions is the mystic's impact on the historical world, his conflict with the religious life of his day and with his community. No historian can say — nor is it his business to answer such questions whether a given mystic in the course of his individual religious experience actually found what he was so eagerly looking for. What concerns us here is not the mystic's inner fulfillment. But if we wish to understand the specific tension that often prevailed between mysticism and religious authority, we shall do well to recall certain basic facts concerning mysticism.
A mystic is a man who has been favored with an immediate, and to him real, experience of the divine, of ultimate reality, or who at least strives to attain such experience. His experience may come to him through sudden illumination, or it may be the result of long and often elaborate preparations. From a historical point of view, the mystical quest for the divine takes place almost exclusively wit a prescribed tradition-the exceptions seem to be limited to modern times, with their dissolution of all traditional ties. Where such a tradition prevails, a religious authority, established long before the mystic was born, has been recognized by the com munity for many generations.
No. 562 (2 July 1714).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
During an election debate hosted by the BBC https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/29/tory-mp-dominic-raab-jeered-over-food-bank-comments (29 May 2017)
2010s, 2017