
“Every life has moments that change us forever and make us who we are.”
Source: Apples and Oranges https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/non-fiction/79-apples-a-oranges-brenner?start=3
Attributed to Milton at http://quotationsbook.com/quote/31964/#sthash.zAJjMqmY.dpbs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverence_(emotion)#Quotations, great-quotes.com, and brainyquote.com.
Spirituality author Sarah Ban Breathnach writes, in her 1996 Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude: "Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life (is it abundant or is it lacking?) and the world (is it friendly or is it hostile?)." A Milton quotation occurs on the same page.
Misattributed
“Every life has moments that change us forever and make us who we are.”
Source: Apples and Oranges https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/non-fiction/79-apples-a-oranges-brenner?start=3
Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. xvi
Context: Any global tradition needs to begin with a shared worldview — a culture-independent, globally accepted consensus as to how things are. From my perspective, this part is easy. How things are is, well, how things are; our scientific account of Nature, an account that can be called the Epic of Evolution… This is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true.
If religious emotions can be elicited by natural reality — and I believe that they can — then the story of Nature has the potential to serve as the cosmos for the global ethos that we need to articulate. I will not presume to suggest what this ethos might look like. Its articulation must be a global project. But I am convinced that the project can be undertaken only if we all experience a solemn gratitude that we exist at all, share a reverence for how life works, and acknowledge a deep and complex imperative that life continue.
could we desire more?
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 308.
The Reinvention of Work (New York: Harper, 1994), p. 128.
"I've Learned Some Things" (1977)
Variant translations:
There is one thing I learned from what I lived:
When you live, you must live big, like being one with the rivers, the sky, and the whole universe
Because what we call lifetime is a gift presented to life
And life is a gift presented to you.
Translated as "There Is One Thing I Learned From What I Lived" by Sãleyman Fatih Akgãl at TC Turkish Poetry Pages
I've Learned Some Things (2008)
“The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment.”
Longing