“This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine.”

—  Robinson Jeffers

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; also partly quoted in the essay "Robinson Jeffers, Pantheist Poet" http://web.archive.org/20011119074326/members.aol.com/PHarri5642/jeffers.htm by John Courtney
Context: I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars, none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions — the world of spirits.
I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us.

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 "This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to lo…" by Robinson Jeffers?
Robinson Jeffers photo
Robinson Jeffers 59
American poet 1887–1962

Related quotes

Zooey Deschanel photo

“My eyes are so bleary
I guess I'm young but I feel so weary
I've tried to express it
But I think its all a bore
Its at the heart of me,
A very part of me”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"Black Hole".
She & Him : Volume One (2008)

Ernest Hemingway photo

“I love thee and thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be with thee that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving thee.”

Ernest Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Sun Ra photo

“I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

As quoted in a press release by A&M Records (1989) http://www.elrarecords.com/sunra.html

Emma Forrest photo

“It's as if he can no longer acknowledge the love he felt or the pain I am in. I have been dismissed. I don't think I was smarter or as beautiful as the other girls he did this to. It's just that I was me. It was all I had.”

Emma Forrest (1976) British journalist, novelist and screenwriter

Source: Your Voice in My Head

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“There is no oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I bear you.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor — that, with the exception of occasional follies and excesses which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and which are hourly committed by others without attracting any notice whatever — I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours. If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world would call a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chivalrous.
" Letter to Mrs. Whitman http://www.lfchosting.com/eapoe/WORKS/letters/p4810181.htm" (1848-10-18).

Kate Bush photo

“For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It's so a part of who I am.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

MOJO interview (2005)
Context: For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life. It's so a part of who I am. It's so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. Friends of mine in the business don't know how dishwashers work. For me, that's frightening. I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being. Even more so now where you've got this sort of truly silly preoccupation with celebrities. Just because somebody's been in an ad on TV, so what? Who gives a toss?

George William Russell photo

“Let me dream only with my heart,
Love first, and after see:
Know thy diviner counterpart
Before I kneel to thee.
So in thy motions all expressed
Thy angel I may view:
I shall not on thy beauty rest,
But Beauty's ray in you.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Donald J. Trump photo

“Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview with Ashleigh Banfield on ABC's Good Morning America (17 March 2011); also in "Trump on 2012: ‘Part of Beauty of Me Is I'm Very Rich'" (17 March 2011) http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/03/17/trump-on-2012-part-of-beauty-of-me-is-im-very-rich/
2010s, 2011

Catherine of Genoa photo

“I shall never rest until I am hidden and enclosed in that divine heart wherein all created forms are lost, and, so lost, remain thereafter all divine; nothing else can satisfy true, pure, and simple love”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Life and Doctrine

“What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Related topics