"Heroic Reason", as translated by H. R. Hays, in Selected Writings of Juan Ramon Jimenez (1957) edited by Eugenio Florit, p. 231.
Context: A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition. When we say an artist is in a state of transition, many believe that we are belittling. In my opinion when people speak of an art of transition this indicates a better art and the best that art can give. Transition is a complete present which unites the past and the future in a momentary progressive ecstasy, a progressive eternity, a true eternity of eternities, eternal moments. Progressive ecstasy is above all dynamic; movement is what sustains life and true death is nothing but lack of movement, be the corpse upright or supine. Without movement life is annihilated, within and without, for lack of dynamic cohesion. But the dynamism should be principally of the spirit, of the idea, it should be a moral dynamic ecstasy, dynamic in relation to progress, ecstatic in relation to permanence.
“If a congregation somewhere comes to life as Jerusalem at some hour, that carries no necessary implications for either the past or the future of that congregation. The Jerusalem occurrence is sufficient unto itself. There is—then and there—a transfiguration in which the momentary coincides with the eternal, the innocuous becomes momentous and the great is recognized as trivial, the end of history is revealed as the fulfillment of life here and now, and the whole of creation is beheld as sanctified.”
Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), pp. 60-61
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William Stringfellow 11
American theologian 1928–1985Related quotes
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002), 232-233.
Bk. III, Ch. 4.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Tancred (1847)
Große Stunde! Mit dem zweiten Menschen, dem anderen verjubelt und verträumt. Tage, Jahre sammeln sich. Eine ruhende stille Insel im Ozean Welt sind wir. Ende und Anfang! Grenze zwischen Leben und Ewigkeit! Rausch, Fülle, Dasein!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
In a letter dated April 25, 1825. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361
Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Sarah Greenough, Washington: National Gallery of Art. 2000, pp. 26–53; as quoted on Wikipedia
“The past has ended its time, the present is the moment, the future the becoming.”
Original: (it) Il passato ha concluso il suo tempo, il presente è l'attimo, il futuro il divenire.
Source: prevale.net
“The door opened, and the men of the congregation began to come out of the church at Peribonka.”
Source: Maria Chapdelaine (1913), Ch. 1, p. 4