“Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.”
“"What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But hush!"
"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of Being!" "Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said I. "Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is no easy task," said my Master; "try you." ”
Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Edwin Abbott Abbott 87
British theologian and author 1838–1926Related quotes
Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 26
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
This comes from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, part 1, chapter 1.
Misattributed
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
“Think of me what you will,
I've got a little space to fill.”
You Don't Know How it Feels
Lyrics, Wildflowers (1994)
Said in conversation with Frederic Prokosch and quoted in Prokosch's Voices: A Memoir (1983), "At Sylvia’s." Joyce was replying to Prokosch's statement that Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses was written as a stream of consciousness. "Molly Bloom was a down-to-earth lady" said Joyce. "She would never have indulged in anything so refined as a stream of consciousness."