“When a man is actually with God, and then sees what he has tried to do and in our terms done so marvellously. it amounts to something which is utterly inadequate. That's what I'm saying: that the steeple reaching up so far, far away, that Salisbury Cathedral has a beautiful steeple, but what is it compared with the sky into which it is reaching? It is in this comparison that one is aware of on the one hand the absurdity of our efforts, and on the other the inadequacy of them”

Interview with Bill Buckley

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When a man is actually with God, and then sees what he has tried to do and in our terms done so marvellously. it amount…" by Malcolm Muggeridge?
Malcolm Muggeridge photo
Malcolm Muggeridge 37
English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist 1903–1990

Related quotes

Napoleon I of France photo

“The existence of God is attested by everything that appeals to our imagination. And if our eye cannot reach Him it is because He has not permitted our intelligence to go so far.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Tom Petty photo

“And for one desperate moment
There he crept back in her memory.
God it's so painful, something that's so close
Is still so far out of reach.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

American Girl
Lyrics, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1974)

Eugène Delacroix photo

“The most marvelous and far-reaching change which man ever undergoes is in his moral character and spiritual nature.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 33
Context: The most significant change in a man is not the change in his bodily strength or mental capacity. The most marvelous and far-reaching change which man ever undergoes is in his moral character and spiritual nature.

Louisa May Alcott photo

“Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

As quoted in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) by Elbert Hubbard, p. 62

Moby photo

“It will be interesting to see what the long term fruits of our national apathy will be, 'cos so far they've been pretty foul.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"?", journal entry (20 January 2003) at moby.com http://www.moby.com/journal/2003-01-20/.html

H.P. Lovecraft photo
Confucius photo
Robinson Jeffers photo

“I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one's own life and environment beautiful, as far as one's power reaches.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Letter to Sister Mary James Power (1 October 1934); published in The Wild God of the World : An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers (2003), edited by Albert Gelpi, p. 189 - 190
Context: I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one's own life and environment beautiful, as far as one's power reaches. This includes moral beauty, one of the qualities of humanity, though it seems not to appear elsewhere in the universe. But I would have each person realize that his contribution is not important, its success not really a matter for exultation nor its failure for mourning; the beauty of things is sufficient without him.
(An office of tragic poetry is to show that there is beauty in pain and failure as much as in success and happiness.)

Related topics