Quotes about behold (456 quotes, page 3)

“Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Love , Life , Men , Pleasure

“Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Friendship , Soul , History

“Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behavior; to love her is a liberal education.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

On Lady Elizabeth Hastings, in Tatler (1709-1711), no. 49

Love , Education , Behavior

“I had started to become interested in the punk scene and started to dress differently than a lot of the kids in Grand Rapids, Michigan were dressing. And I got my nose pierced and I started to shave my head and dye my hair and wear a lot of black. And so I looked like somebody that might be arrested… I was a bit of a class clown, usually the one that people would get to do the things that they were afraid to get in trouble for… On graduation night, I was arrested… I had a boyfriend at the time who was a couple centuries older than I was and I'd convinced him that we should go and glue the locks of the school so that people couldn't get in the morning. And lo and behold, they had a security guard because it was graduation night and they were concerned that idiots like me might try and do something like that.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On her teenage punk years and being arrested on graduation night — NPR "Gillian Anderson On 'The Fall' And Getting Arrested In High School" http://www.npr.org/2013/12/07/249240231/gillian-anderson-on-the-fall-and-getting-arrested-in-high-school/ (December 7, 2013)
2010s

People , School , Time , Night

“We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 7

God , Truth , Lie , Universe

“I have signifying of Three manners of Cheer of our Lord. The first is Cheer of Passion, as He shewed while He was here in this life, dying. Though this Beholding be mournful and troubled, yet it is glad and joyous: for He is God. — The second manner of Cheer is Ruth and Compassion: and this sheweth He, with sureness of Keeping, to all His lovers that betake them to His mercy. The third is the Blissful Cheer, as it shall be without end: and this was oftenest and longest-continued.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 71

Life , God , Lovers , Passion

“And its seeing is Unconditioned,
Being without manner,
And it is neither thus nor thus,
Neither here nor there;
For that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all,
And the vision is made high and wide.
It knows not itself where That is which it sees;
and it cannot come thereto, for its seeing is in no wise,
and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without return.
That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full,
Nor wholly attain, for its apprehension is wayless,
and without manner,
And therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend Him.
Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless,
Is intermediary between contemplation
In images and similitudes of the intellect,
And unveiled contemplation
Beyond all images in the Light of God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

God , Way , Light

“At any rate we may be sure that the political instinct of our bourgeois opponents, as soon as their class interests come into play, will lead them to take a position hostile to us. A classical example is furnished by Belgium, where, as already remarked, a compromise was concluded under the most favorable circumstances conceivable, between the socialists and the liberals. Our party was in undisputed possession of the leadership and was therefore in no danger of being cheated out of the fruits of the common victory. The end sought was universal, equal and direct suffrage. But the clerical party knows its boys, knows its Pappenheimers. It knows that the bourgeoisie has no class interest in giving the laborers, who, in modern industrial states, constitute a majority of the population, the universal suffrage and thereby the prospect of winning a majority and getting political supremacy. It made a counter demand for proportional representation with plural voting, that is, giving more votes to the rich, and thereby granting to the radical bourgeoisie a share in the government, if it would assist in defeating universal and direct suffrage. And behold, without a minute’s hesitation the gentlemen of the radical bourgeoisie broke their agreement with the socialists and joined the clericals in their fight against universal suffrage and the social democracy. Whoever is not convinced by this example that the emancipation struggle of the proletariat is a class struggle is one on whom further arguments would be wasted.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Hostility , Democracy , Boy , Universe

“Russia! Russia! I see you now, from my wondrous, beautiful past I behold you! How wretched, dispersed, and uncomfortable everything is about you…”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Dead Souls (1842)

Beauty , Past

“It pleased the great Creator of the world to make three sorts of living creatures. Angels he made pure spirits, without flesh, and therefore he made them only for heaven and not to dwell on earth. Beasts were made flesh, without immortal souls, and therefore they were made only for the earth and not for heaven: Man is of a middle nature between both, as partaking of both flesh and spirit, so is he made for earth, but as his passage or way to heaven, and not that this should be his home or happiness. The blessed state that man was made for was to behold the glorious majesty of the Lord and to praise him among his holy angels; and to love him, and to be filled with his love forever.”

Richard Baxter book A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live

A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live, Sermon 1

Love , World , Angels , Way

“Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825), p. 64

Men

“I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain…I do not envy that man's feelings, who can behold the sufferings of Switzerland, and who derives from that sight no idea of what is meant by the deliverance of Europe. I do not envy the feelings of that man, who can look without emotion at Italy – plundered, insulted, trampled upon, exhausted, covered with ridicule, and horror, and devastation – who can look at all this, and be at a loss to guess what is meant by the deliverance of Europe? As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance. Does such a man contemplate Holland groaning under arbitrary oppressions and exactions? Does he turn his eyes to Spain trembling at the nod of a foreign master? And does the word deliverance still sound unintelligibly in his ear? Has he heard of the rescue and salvation of Naples, by the appearance and the triumphs of the British fleet? Does he know that the monarchy of Naples maintains its existence at the sword's point? And is his understanding, and his heart, still impenetrable to the sense and meaning of the deliverance of Europe?”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

Speech in 1798, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 66.

People , Feeling , Idea , Understanding

“Behold
The approach of him whom none believes,
Whom all believe that all believe,
A pagan in a varnished car.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Cars

“Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands.”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Epithalamion, line 223; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Happiness

“And as she lookt about, she did behold,
How over that same dore was likewise writ,
Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold,
That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
By any ridling skill, or commune wit.
At last she spyde at that same roomes upper end,
Another yron dore, on which was writ,
Be not too bold.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 11, stanza 54
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

Communication

“An eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternal ascent. If there is an end to all suffering, however pure and spiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end to all desire, what is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If in paradise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him? And if there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God little by little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining Him, there does not always remain something more for them to know and desire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shall they not fall asleep?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

Love , God , Suffering

“This possession is a simple and abysmal tasting of all good and of eternal life; and in this tasting we are swallowed up above reason and without reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead, which is never moved…And therefrom follows the last point that can be put into words, that is, when the spirit beholds a Darkness into which it cannot enter with the reason. And there it feels itself dead and lost to itself, and one with God without difference and without distinction.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Life , God , Feeling , Dead

“I was broken in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 10

Soul , Nature , Reading , Night

“In June, 1829, the Lord called Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and myself as the three witnesses, to behold the vision of the Angel, as recorded in the fore part of the Book of Mormon, and to bear testimony to the world that the Book of Mormon is true. I was not called to bear testimony to the mission of Brother Joseph Smith any farther than his work of translating the Book of Mormon, as you can see by reading the testimony of us three witnesses.”

David Whitmer (1805–1888) Book of Mormon witness

An Address to All Believers in Christ, page 32 (1887)

Books , World , Angels , Reading

“Prostrating myself mentally before my Guide, I cried, "How is it, O divine ideal of consummate loveliness and wisdom that I see thy inside, and yet cannot discern thy heart, thy lungs, thy arteries, thy liver?" "What you think you see, you see not," he replied; "it is not given to you, nor to any other Being to behold my internal parts. I am of a different order of Beings from those in Flatland. Were I a Circle, you could discern my intestines, but I am a Being, composed as I told you before, of many Circles, the Many in the One, called in this country a Sphere. And, just as the outside of a Cube is a Square, so the outside of a Sphere presents the appearance of a Circle."Bewildered though I was by my Teacher's enigmatic utterance, I no longer chafed against it, but worshipped him in silent adoration. He continued, with more mildness in his voice. "Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you. Let us begin by casting back a glance at the region whence you came.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 18. How I came to Spaceland, and What I Saw There

Wisdom , Understanding , Thinking , Teachers

“Francis Bacon once said there is no beauty that hath not some strangeness to its proportion. Cameron Diaz proves that- she's got a mouth like a slice of watermelon. But the Flying Scotsman proves it to be wrong. There is no strangeness at all. He is exquisite to behold, partly because he is so nicely balanced and partly because he seems to shout "I AM VERY POWERFUL.'”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Beauty , Flying

“Behold a silly tender babe,
In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies;
Alas! a piteous sight.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

"New Prince, New Pomp", line 1; p. 96.

Home , Winter , Night

“Do you believe it! Do you believe that the King of glory is present, and has been since 1874?… Behold, the King reigns! you are his publicity agents. Therefore advertise, advertise, advertise, the King and his kingdom.”

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) American judge

The Kingdom (1925)

“Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God — who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 62

Love , God , World , Sense

“These selfish professors of religion [monks] grudged every act of munificence that was not applied to themselves, or their monasteries; and could not behold the good fortune of the minstrels without expressing their indignation; which they often did in terms of scurrilous abuse, calling them janglers, mimics, buffoons, monsters of men, and comtemptible scoffers. They also severely censured the nobility for patronizing and rewarding such a shameless set of sordid flatterers, and the populace for frequenting their exhibitions, and being delighted with their performances, which diverted them from more serious pursuits, and corrupted their morals. On the other hand, the minstrels appear to have been ready enough to give them ample occasion for censure; and, indeed, I apprehend that their own immorality and insolence contributed more to their downfal, than all the defamatory declamations of their opponents.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 192
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Minstrels

Men , Religion , Appearance , Selfishness

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe S4E1
Screenwipe

Beauty

“Man lives very well upon flesh, you say, but, if he thinks this food to be natural to him, why does he not use it as it is, as furnished to him by Nature? But, in fact, he shrinks in horror from seizing and rending living or even raw flesh with his teeth, and lights a fire to change its natural and proper condition. … What is clearer than that man is not furnished for hunting, much less for eating, other animals? In one word, we seem to be admirably admonished by Cicero that man was destined for other things than for seizing and cutting the throats of other animals. If you answer that ‘that may be said to be an industry ordered by Nature, by which such weapons are invented,’ then, behold! it is by the very same artificial instrument that men make weapons for mutual slaughter. Do they this at the instigation of Nature? Can a use so noxious be called natural?”

Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) French philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, priest, and scientist

Faculty is given by Nature, but it is our own fault that we make a perverse use of it.
Letter to Van Helmont, quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 103-104.

Men , Food , Nature , Thinking

“Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 4.

God , Way , Business , Nature

“I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead ofnearer to it — at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Love , Men , People , Dreams

“Behold love, thy power how she despiseth:
My great pain, how little she regardeth
The holy oath, whereof she taketh no cure
Broken she hath : and yet she bideth sure
Right at her ease, and little she dreadeth.”

Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) English poet and diplomat (1503-1542)

Rondeau 1 http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Wyatt1.htm.

Love , Pain

“Others of graver mien; behold, adorn'd
With holy ensigns, how sublime they move,
And bending oft their sanctimonious eyes
Take homage of the simple-minded throng;
Ambassadors of heaven!”

Mark Akenside book The Pleasures of the Imagination

Book III, lines 109–113
The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)

“Back to the glass in terror we came,
And stared at the writing round the frame.
We could not understand one word:
And suddenly we thought we heard
The hissing of the snakes again:
How could we front them all alone?
O, madly we clutched at the mirrored stone
And wished we were back on the flowery plain:
And swifter than thought and swift as fear
The whole world flashed, and behold we were there.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

World , Fear , Understanding

“God brought to my mind that I should sin. And for pleasance that I had in beholding of Him, I attended not readily to that shewing; and our Lord full mercifully abode, and gave me grace to attend. And this shewing I took singularly to myself; but by all the gracious comfort that followeth, as ye shall see, I was learned to take it for all mine even-Christians: all in general and nothing in special: though our Lord shewed me that I should sin, by me alone is understood all.
And therein I conceived a soft dread. And to this our Lord answered: I keep thee full surely. This word was said with more love and secureness and spiritual keeping than I can or may tell.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 37

Love , God , Learning

“The Merciful Beholding of His Countenance of love fulfilled all earth and descended down with Adam into hell, with which continuant pity Adam was kept from endless death. And thus Mercy and Pity dwelleth with mankind unto the time we come up into Heaven.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Love , Death , Hell , Time

“Say does your heart expand to all mankind
And would you ever to your neighbour do,
— The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind —
As you would have your neighbour do to you?

And, when you, looking on your fellow men
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), A Word to the Calvinists (1843)

Men , God , Strong , Heart

“Tulane and Johnny opened a novelty shop
Back under the counter was the cream of the crop
Everything was clickin’ and the business was good
Till one day, lo and behold, an officer stood
Johnny jumped the counter but he stumbled and fell
But Tulane made it over Johnny just as he yelled
Go head on, Tulane, he can’t catch up with you
Go Tulane, he ain’t man enough for you
Go Tulane, use all the speed you got
Go Tulane, you know you need a lot
Go Tulane, he’s laggin’ behind
Go head on, Tulane”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Tulane" (1970)
Song lyrics

Business , Speed

“They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Truth , Drink

“Behold the true father of his country.”
Ecce parens verus patriae.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book IX, line 601 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Country

“Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 88
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Dreams

“Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head... I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career... And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): God God zal ik nog eenmaal als een waarachtig kunstenaar tot u keeren. Zullen nog eenmaal al die Kunstminnaren mijne werken met eerbied aanschouwen en de lauwer der Kunst mijn schedel sieren.. .Ik voel zo vurig al het schoone mijner edele loopbaan.. .Ach nogmaals roep ik tot u, laat mij veel liever niet leven dan in mijne gevoelen teleurgesteld te worden.
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend in Groningen, pharmacist Essingh; from RKD: Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Beauty , Art , Disappointment , Feeling

“We have seen this complete right wing takeover of modern liberalism, and it is an ugly spectacle to behold.”

Kevin Rudd (1957) Australian politician, 26th Prime Minister of Australia

Rudd's first speech as Labor leader
Speaking of John Howard's Liberal government.
2006

“It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence — the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires — without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.”

Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) American historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273.

God , Feeling , Mountain , Strong

“The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIII: Vashi

Death , Hate , People , Feeling

“Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War , People , Education , Disease

“Behold, now, another providence of God. A ship comes into the harbor.”

William Bradford (1590–1657) English Separatist leader in Leiden, Holland and in Plymouth Colony (1590-1657)

Ch. 6.

God

“Now I behold as in a mirror, in an icon, in a riddle, life eternal, for that is naught other than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest most lovingly to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life; 'tis unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure. 'Tis to cause me to share Thine immortality.... For it is the absolute maximum of every rational desire, than which a greater cannot be.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

Theosophy Trust, Great Teachers Series http://www.theosophytrust.org/311-nicholas-of-cusa

Love , Life , Secret , Soul

“Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings
All desired and timely things.
All whom morning sends to roam,
Hesper loves to lead them home.
Home return who him behold,
Child to mother, sheep to fold,
Bird to nest from wandering wide:
Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 24 ("Epithalamium"), st. 3.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Love , Home , Bird , Time

“Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

L 50
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

Feeling , Sun

“How then can the curious drawer watch, and as it were catch these lovely graces, witty smilings, and those stolen glances which suddenly like lightning pass, and another countenance taketh place, except to behold and very well note and conceit to like.”

Nicholas Hilliard Art of Limning

A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning, eds. R K R Thornton and T G S Cain, (Manchester, 1981), p. 77.

Love , Smile

“When our courteous Lord of His grace sheweth Himself to our soul, we have that we desire. And then we see not, for the time, what we should more pray, but all our intent with all our might is set wholly to the beholding of Him. And this is an high unperceivable prayer, as to my sight: for all the cause wherefor we pray it, it is oned into the sight and beholding of Him to whom we pray; marvellously enjoying with reverent dread, and with so great sweetness and delight in Him that we can pray right nought but as He stirreth us, for the time. And well I wot, the more the soul seeth of God, the more it desireth Him by His grace.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 43

God , Soul , Time

“Go to the cross, and meet there God in sacrifice. Behold Him as Jesus bearing your sin, receiving the shafts of your enmity! Embrace Him, believe in Him, take Him to your inmost heart. Do this, and you shall feel sin die within you, and a glorious quickening, Christ the power of God, Christ in you the hope of glory, shall be consciously risen upon you, as the morn of your new creation.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 232.

God , Hope , Feeling , Heart

“Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of agitators which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (16 June 1792)
1790s

People , Country , Happiness

“In each of the cathedral churches there was a bishop, or an archbishop of fools, elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a pope of fools. These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suit of ecclesiastics who attended upon them, and assisted at the divine service, most of them attired in ridiculous dresses resembling pantomimical players and buffoons; they were accompanied by large crowds of the laity, some being disguised with masks of a monstrous fashion, and others having their faces smutted; in one instance to frighten the beholders, and in the other to excite their laughter: and some, again, assuming the habits of females, practised all the wanton airs of the loosest and most abandoned of the sex. During the divine service this motley crowd were not contended with singing of indecent songs in the choir, but some of them ate, and drank, and played at dice upon the altar, by the side of the priest who celebrated the mass. After the service they put filth into the censers, and ran about the church, leaping, dancing, laughing, singing, breaking obscene jests, and exposing themselves in the most unseemly attitudes with shameless impudence. Another part of these ridiculous ceremonies was, to shave the precentor of fools upon a stage erected before the church, in the presence of the populace; and during the operation, he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses, accompanied by actions equally reprehensible. The bishop, or the pope of fools, performed the divine service habited in the pontifical garments, and gave his benediction to the people before they quitted the church. He was afterwards seated in an open carriage, and drawn about to the different parts of the town, attended by a large train of ecclesiastics and laymen promiscuously mingled together; and many of the most profligate of the latter assumed clerical habits in order to give their impious fooleries the greater effect; they had also with them carts filled with ordure, which they threw occasionally upon the populace assembled to see the procession. These spectacles were always exhibited at Christmas-time, or near to it, but not confined to one particular day.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 345
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

People , Fools , Sex , Fashion

“And wel we see ther is none alive that in every respect may be accompted happie, yea though mortall men were free from all calamities, yet the torments & feare of death should stil attend them But b:sides them, behold, what, and how manye evilles there bee, that unlesse the cloude of error bee removed, impossible it is to see the truth, or receive allay of our earthly woes.”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

Cardanus Comforte (1574)

Death , Men , Truth , Fear

“No man loves God who hates his kind,
Who tramples on his brother's heart and soul;
Who seeks to shackle, cloud, or fog the mind
By fears of hell has not perceived our goal.

God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
To give the heavy laden rest
And peace from sorrow, sin, and strife.

Behold the Universal Spirit came
To all the churches, not to one alone;
On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame
Round each apostle as a halo shone.

Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed,
We oft have battled for an empty name,
And sought by dogma, edict, cult, or creed,
To send each other to the quenchless flame.

Is Christ then twain? Was Cephas, Paul,
To save the world, nailed to the tree?
Then why divisions here at all?
Christ's love enfolds both you and me.

His pure sweet love is not confined
By creed which segregate and raise a wall.
His love enfolds, embraces human kind,
No matter what ourselves or Him we call.

Then why not take Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds which tear apart?
But one thing matters, be it heard
That brother love fill every heart.

There's but one thing the world has need to know.
There's but one balm for all our human woe:

There's but one way that leads to heaven above--
That way is human sympathy and love.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

Creed or Christ (1909)
Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm

Love , Life , God , Hate

“In comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces—of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. But the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity, to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 131-132

World , Travel , Mountain , Animals

“All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere!
— And what am I, that I am here? For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

Truth , Youth , Faith , Star

“Centuries ago, when I first stood on that little boulevard stage in Paris — when I saw the happy faces, when I heard applause — I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny; I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last.
Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the eye of the beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will — is utterly whole and triumphant.”

Anne Rice The Vampire Chronicles

Lestat
Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

Soul , Birth , Understanding , Chance

“Longer than memory we have known that each animal has its power and place, each a skill, virtue, wisdom, innocence — a special access to the structure and flow of the world. Each surpasses ourselves in some way. Together, sacred, they help hold the cosmos together, making it a joy and beauty to behold, but above all a challenge to understand as story, drama, and sacred play.”

Paul Shepard (1925–1996) American human ecologist

The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (1996), Island Press, 1997, Part V, p. 173 https://books.google.it/books?id=dwq8BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA173.

Wisdom , World , Beauty , Way

“We have a way from this visible world to the Unseen,
For we are the companions of Religions Messenger.
We have a way from the house to the garden,
we are the neighbor of the cypress and jasmine.
Every day we come to the garden
and see a hundred blossoms.
In order to scatter them among the lovers,
we will our robes to overflowing. Behold our words!
They are the fragrance of those roses -
we are the rosebush of certainty's rose garden.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Divan as quoted in Classical Islam and the Naqshbandi Sufi Tradition By Muhammad Hisham Kabbani p.195

World , Religion , Way , Lovers

“And this I saw: that what time we see needs wherefor we pray, then our good Lord followeth us, helping our desire; and when we of His special grace plainly behold Him, seeing none other needs, then we follow Him and He draweth us unto Him by love.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Source: The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 43

Love , Time , Help

“I beheld the working of all the blessed Trinity: in which beholding I saw and understood these three properties: the property of the Fatherhood, the property of the Motherhood, and the property of the Lordhood, in one God.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 58

God

“For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. This man was hurt in his might and made full feeble; and he was stunned in his understanding so that he turned from the beholding of his Lord. But his will was kept whole in God’s sight; — for his will I saw our Lord commend and approve. But himself was letted and blinded from the knowing of this will; and this is to him great sorrow and grievous distress: for neither doth he see clearly his loving Lord, which is to him full meek and mild, nor doth he see truly what himself is in the sight of his loving Lord. And well I wot when these two are wisely and truly seen, we shall get rest and peace here in part, and the fulness of the bliss of Heaven, by His plenteous grace.
And this was a beginning of teaching which I saw in the same time, whereby I might come to know in what manner He beholdeth us in our sin.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51
Context: The Lord that sat stately in rest and in peace, I understood that He is God. The Servant that stood afore the Lord, I understood that it was shewed for Adam: that is to say, one man was shewed, that time, and his falling, to make it thereby understood how God beholdeth All-Man and his falling. For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. This man was hurt in his might and made full feeble; and he was stunned in his understanding so that he turned from the beholding of his Lord. But his will was kept whole in God’s sight; — for his will I saw our Lord commend and approve. But himself was letted and blinded from the knowing of this will; and this is to him great sorrow and grievous distress: for neither doth he see clearly his loving Lord, which is to him full meek and mild, nor doth he see truly what himself is in the sight of his loving Lord. And well I wot when these two are wisely and truly seen, we shall get rest and peace here in part, and the fulness of the bliss of Heaven, by His plenteous grace.
And this was a beginning of teaching which I saw in the same time, whereby I might come to know in what manner He beholdeth us in our sin. And then I saw that only Pain blameth and punisheth, and our courteous Lord comforteth and sorroweth; and ever He is to the soul in glad Cheer, loving, and longing to bring us to His bliss.

Love , God , Peace , Understanding

“Man's life is like unto a winter's day,—
Some break their fast and so depart away;
Others stay dinner, then depart full fed;
The longest age but sups and goes to bed.
O reader, then behold and see!
As we are now, so must you be.”

Joseph Henshaw (1608–1679) British bishop

Horæ Sucissive (1631), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life , Age , Winter

“Her position before was sheltered from the light: now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding: small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes — had they been agreeable in expression, they would have been irresistible.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood on Catherine Linton (Ch. II).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Pleasure , Light , Past

“There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

God

“But we must learn it sooner or later. There surely comes a time when the mind perceives that this world is the work of God also and not of devils, and that in the order of nature we may behold the ways of the Eternal; in fact, that God is here and now in the humblest and most familiar fact, as sleepless and active as ever he was in old Judea. This perception has come and is coming to more minds to-day than ever before--this perception of the modernness of God, of the modernness of inspiration, of the modernness of religion; that there was never any more revelation than there is now, never any more conversing of God with man, never any more Garden of Eden, or fall of Adam, or thunder of Sinai, or ministering angels, than there is now; in fact, that these things are not historical events, but inward experiences and perceptions perpetually renewed or typified in the growth of the race. This is the modern gospel; this is the one vital and formative religious thought of modern times.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. IV: Natural Versus Supernatural

God , World , Religion , Angels

“All these our Lord shewed me in the first Sight, with time and space to behold it. And the bodily sight stinted, but the spiritual sight dwelled in mine understanding, and I abode with reverent dread, joying in that I saw. And I desired, as I durst, to see more, if it were His will, or else longer time the same.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 8

Understanding , Time , Joy

“I do not see that it is possible, nor can I discover that it would be right, for me now to withdraw from the cause in which I have so long taken so deep an interest. The work is great, and vast are the results depending upon it, and unhappily our laborers are not abundant…But conscious of the increasing hazard we run owing to the long continuance of monopolies, and beholding the appalling sufferings of multitudes of my fellow-creatures, and satisfied that all benevolence and charity and the teaching of religion and of schools fall short of much of their full effect owing to the degraded and impoverished condition of the people—I should feel myself guilty, as possessing abundance and leaving others to hunger, nakedness and immorality and deepest ignorance and crime, if I were to retire into domestic quiet and leave the struggle to be carried on entirely by others.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to his mother-in-law Mrs. Priestman (November 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 102-103.
1840s

Hunger , People , School , Religion

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love , Life , Death , God

“Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"The Hippopotamus" http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/848.html

“Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time.”

David Whitmer (1805–1888) Book of Mormon witness

Letter of David Whitmer to Anthony Metcalf, March 1887. Quoted in Richard Lloyd Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1981), p. 86.

Angels , Nature , Time

“I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Dreams , Way

“But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 47
Context: Two things belong to our soul as duty: the one is that we reverently marvel, the other that we meekly suffer, ever enjoying in God. For He would have us understand that we shall in short time see clearly in Himself all that we desire.
And notwithstanding all this, I beheld and marvelled greatly: What is the mercy and forgiveness of God? For by the teaching that I had afore, I understood that the mercy of God should be the forgiveness of His wrath after the time that we have sinned. For methought that to a soul whose meaning and desire is to love, the wrath of God was harder than any other pain, and therefore I took that the forgiveness of His wrath should be one of the principal points of His mercy. But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.

Life , God , Feeling , Soul

“Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. A matter of taste, a whim, an eye, a beholder, an opinion, a spin, light crossing the frame, paint, projection. The moment. Context.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Weblog

Beauty , Light , Painting

“The world needs new moral impulses which, I'm afraid, won't come from the churches, heavily compromised as they have been throughout the centuries. Perhaps those impulses must come from scientists in the tradition of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. In spite of failures and persecutions, these men devoted their lives to proving that the universe is a single entity, in which, I believe, a humanized God has no place. The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation! And as man becomes conscious of the stupendous laws that govern the universe in perfect harmony, he begins to realize how small he is. He sees the pettiness of human existence, with its ambitions and intrigues, its "I am better than thou" creed. This is the beginning of cosmic religion within him; fellowship and human service become his moral code. And without such moral foundations, we are hopelessly doomed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 66

Men , God , People , World

“Occasionally discouragement may darken our pathway; frustration may be a constant companion. In our ears there may sound the sophistry of Satan as he whispers, "You cannot save the world; your small efforts are meaningless. You haven’t time to be concerned for others." Trusting in the Lord, let us turn our heads from such falsehoods and make certain our feet are firmly planted in the path of service and our hearts and souls dedicated to follow the example of the Lord. In moments when the light of resolution dims and when the heart grows faint, we can take comfort from His promise: "Be not weary in well-doing. … Out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind."”

Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Finding Peace, Ensign, Mar. 2004, 3.

World , Soul , Effort , Light

“Behold, most beloved reader, thus true faith or true knowledge begets love, and love begets obedience to the commandments of God. Therefore Christ Jesus says, "He that believeth on him is not condemned." Again at another place, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death into life," Jn. 5:24. For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonished and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.246

Love , Life , Death , God

“The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everlasting fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro [because they lack a sacred bard]. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

This passage has sometimes been paraphrased as "History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man".
A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Life , Death , Men , Peace

“That heavenly music! what is it I hear?
The notes of the harpers ring sweet in mine ear.
And, see, soft unfolding those portals of gold,
The King all arrayed in his beauty behold!”

William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796–1877) United States Anglican Episcopal clergyman

I would not live alway (published 1826), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Beauty , Music

“He taught that I should behold the glorious Satisfaction : for this Amends-making is more pleasing to God and more worshipful, without comparison, than ever was the sin of Adam harmful. Then signifieth our blessed Lord thus in this teaching, that we should take heed to this: For since I have made well the most harm, then it is my will that thou know thereby that I shall make well all that is less.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 29

God

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.”
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam.

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

X, 27, as translated in Theology and Discovery: Essays in honor of Karl Rahner, S.J. (1980) edited by William J. Kelly
Variant translations:
So late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! So late I loved you!
The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett‎ (2007), by Lee Oser, p. 29
Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
Introduction to a Philosophy of Religion (1970) by Alice Von Hildebrand
Confessions (c. 397)

Love , Beauty , Search

“Behold, within the leafy shade,
Those bright blue eggs together laid!
On me the chance-discovered sight
Gleamed like a vision of delight.”

William Wordsworth The Sparrow's Nest

The Sparrow's Nest, st. 1 (1801).

Chance

“As long as we are in this life, what time that we by our folly turn us to the beholding of the reproved, tenderly our Lord God toucheth us and blissfully calleth us, saying in our soul: Let be all thy love, my dearworthy child: turn thee to me — I am enough to thee — and enjoy in thy Saviour and in thy salvation. And that this is our Lord’s working in us, I am sure the soul that hath understanding therein by grace shall see it and feel it.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Love , Life , God , Feeling

“Rightfulness is that thing that is so good that may not be better than it is. For God Himself is very Rightfulness, and all His works are done rightfully as they are ordained from without beginning by His high Might, His high Wisdom, His high Goodness. And right as He ordained unto the best, right so He worketh continually, and leadeth it to the same end; and He is ever full-pleased with Himself and with all His works.
And the beholding of this blissful accord is full sweet to the soul that seeth by grace.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 35

Wisdom , God , Soul

“I shall now no more behold my dear father with these "bodily eyes. With him a whole threescore and ten years of the past has doubly died for me. It is as if a new leaf in the great hook of time were turned over. Strange time — endless time or of which I see neither end nor beginning. All rushes on. Man follows man. His life is as a tale that has been told; yet under Time does there not lie Eternity? Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my father, is even now near me, with me. Both he and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we shall in some higher state of being meet one another, recognize one another. As it is written. We shall be forever with God. The possibility, nay (in some way), the certainty, of perennial existence daily grows plainer to me. "The essence of whatever was, is, or shall be, even now is." God is great. God is good. His will be done, for it will be right. As it is, I can think peaceably of the departed love. All that was earthly, harsh, sinful, in our relation has fallen away; all that was holy in it remains. I can see my dear father's life in some measure as the sunk pillar on which mine was to rise and be built; the waters of time have now swelled up round his (as they will round mine); I can see it all transfigured, though I touch it no longer. I might almost say his spirit seems to have entered into me (so clearly do I discern and love him); I seem to myself only the continuation and second volume of my father. These days that I have spent thinking of him and of his end are the peaceablest, the only Sabbath that I have had in London. One other of the universal destinies of man has overtaken me. Thank Heaven, I know, and have known, what it is to be a son; to love a father, as spirit can love spirit. God give me to live to my father's honor and to His. And now, beloved father, farewell for the last time in this world of shadows I In the world of realities may the Great Father again bring us together in perfect holiness and perfect love! Amen!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Love , Life , God , Lie

“After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: "Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." In fact, I said to them, confidently: "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Hunger , God , Faith , Food

“Behold therefore, this England of the Year 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or dreamland, peopled with mere vaporous Fantasms, Rymer's Foedera, and Doctrines of the Constitution, but a green solid place, that grew corn and several other things. The Sun shone on it; the vicissitude of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn; ditches were dug, furrowfields ploughed, and houses built. Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by night returned home weary to their several lairs. In wondrous Dualism, then as now, lived nations of breathing men; alternating, in all ways, between Light and Dark; between joy and sorrow, between rest and toil, between hope, hope reaching high as Heaven, and fear deep as very Hell. Not vapour Fantasms, Rymer's Foedera at all!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men , People , Fear , Hope

“I would love to talk to you about that, Josh, but there's something else I want to bring up, and that's this. (Holds up a screenplay entitled "Live For The Moment: The Jeff Hardy Story") I had a friend in a fancy Hollywood agency the other day, and he ran across this little gem. Somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay about the Jeff Hardy story. So I was paging through it, and lo and behold, it culminates, of course, with Jeff conquering his demons and beating me her tonight in a TLC match at SummerSlam. What a great feelgood story, Josh, all except, of course, for the ending, which is not reality-based. It's fake, it's phony, just like everybody who lives in this town. I'd go as far as to say that I'm the only real person in this building right now. I wish I could say it's a Los Angeles epidemic, but the fact is it's worldwide. You have people that falsely idolize what they see in movies and on television; you have housewives in Iowa that subscribe to U. S. Weekly, US Weekly, or whatever it's called, so they can model their hair after Kate Gosselin, instead of helping their own children with their homework; you have little kids all over the world, millions of them, who idolize the "hip, cool star", and it doesn't matter if that hip cool star is some dork vampire in Twilight, or if it's Jeff Hardy. It doesn't matter if that hip cool star has a reprehensible, reckless lifestyle. You know, it doesn't matter if the collective intelligence of this entire country continues to spiral downward, day in and day out. It doesn't matter as long as it's cool, right? You know why they don't make movies about a guy like me? It's cause I don't support your poisoned society. I don't support this den of iniquity known as Hollywood. No, instead, I'm dismissed as being preachy, except I'm not preachy—I never have been. I just tell the truth. You know, I'm not a screenwriter either, but tonight I think I'll take a stab at it. Tonight I'm gonna rewrite the ending of "The Jeff Hardy Story."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

It's gonna be horrifying. It's gonna be very, very graphic. It might be hard to watch for a lot of people, but it will have a happy ending: new World Heavyweight Champion—CM Punk.
At SummerSlam
Friday Night SmackDown

Love , Children , People , Truth

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

"The Dehumanization of Art"
The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

Fate , Art , Personality , Forgetting

“Life, when fully lived under a variety of cultural conditions, can be euphoric and optimistic; it can be a joy to experience and a wonder to behold”

Paul Kurtz (1925–2012) American professor of philosophy

Source: Multi-Secularism: A New Agenda, (2014), p. 58

Life , Joy

“Behold the state of man's unstable mind,
Still prone to change with every changing wind!
All our resolves are weak, but weakest prove
Where sprung from sense of disappointed love.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

O degli uomini inferma e instabil mente!
Come siàn presti a variar disegno!
Tutti i pensier mutamo facilmente,
Più quei che nascon d’amoroso sdegno.
Canto XXIX, stanza 1 (tr. J. Hoole)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Love , Disappointment , Sense , Change

“Lo and behold! God made this
starry wold,
The maggot and the mold; lo and
behold!
He taught the grass contentment
blade by blade,
The sanctity of sameness in a shade.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

Impromptu poem, made at the request of reporters, printed in "Markham v. Prodigy" http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,928761,00.html TIME magazine (23 November 1925)

God , Grass

“64. The proof of apatheia is had when the spirit begins to see its own light, when it remains in a state of tranquility in the presence of the images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

The Praktikos

Life , Sleep , Light

“Galileo had the experience of beholding the heavens as they actually are for perhaps the first time, and wherever he looked he found evidence to support the Copernican system against the Ptolemaic, or at least weaken the authority of the ancients. This shattering experience—of observing the depths of the universe, of being the first mortal to know what the heavens are actually like—made so deep a an impression… that it is only by considering the events of 1609… that one can understand the subsequent direction of his life.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

I. Bernard Cohen,
The Birth of a New Physics (1959)

Life , Understanding , Support , Universe

“Let us say thus in our thinking: I know well I have a shrewd pain; but our Lord is All-Mighty and may punish me mightily; and He is All-Wisdom and can punish me discerningly; and He is all-Goodness and loveth me full tenderly. And in this beholding it is necessary for us to abide; for it is a lovely meekness of a sinful soul, wrought by mercy and grace of the Holy Ghost, when we willingly and gladly take the scourge and chastening of our Lord that Himself will give us. And it shall be full tender and full easy, if that we will only hold us satisfied with Him and with all His works.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 77

Love , Wisdom , Pain , Soul

“O Kunti, grant me some more offspring for the expansion of my race and for the benefit of the world. O blessed one, provide thou that I myself, my ancestors, and thine also, may always have the funeral cake offered to us. O, do what is beneficial to me, and grant me and the world what, indeed, is the best of benefits. O, do what, indeed, may be difficult for thee, moved by the desire of achieving undying fame. Behold, Indra, even though he hath obtained the sovereignty of the celestials, doth yet, for fame alone, perform sacrifices. O handsome one, Brahmanas, well-acquainted with the Vedas, and having achieved high ascetic merit, do yet, for fame alone, approach their spiritual masters with reverence. So also all royal sages and Brahmanas possessed of ascetic wealth have achieved, for fame only, the most difficult of ascetic feat. Therefore, O blameless one, rescue this Madri as by a raft (by granting her the means of obtaining offspring), and achieve thou imperishable fame by making her a mother of children.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu requesting Kunti to help Madri.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIV

Children , World , Wealth

“But in this I stood beholding things general, troublously and mourning, saying thus to our Lord in my meaning, with full great dread: Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come, by sin, to the creature? And here I desired, as far as I durst, to have some more open declaring wherewith I might be eased in this matter.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 29

Hurt

“Behold the sword of the Lord will descend suddenly and quickly upon the earth.”
Ecce gladius Domini super terram, cito et velociter.

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) Italian Dominican friar and preacher

Motto he beheld in a vision (December 1492), as quoted in History of the Christian Church, Vol. V (1910) by Philip Schaff, and David Schley Schaff p. 688
Behold the sword of the Lord, swift and sure, over the earth.
As quoted in Books: The Sword of God" in TIME (17 August 1959)

“Self-satisfaction is scarcely unfamiliar in Europe. But the contemporary mood is something different: an apparently illimitable narcissism, in which the reflection in the water transfigures the future of the planet into the image of the beholder. What explains this degree of political vanity? Obviously, the landscape of the continent has altered in recent years, and its role in the world has grown. Real changes can give rise to surreal dreams, but they need to be calibrated properly, to see what the connections or lack of them might be.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

"Depicting Europe", London Review of Books (20 September 2007)

World , Dreams , Mood , Water

Quotes about behold page 3

Quotes about behold
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