#go

It was out of his compassion that Jesus' healing emerged. He did not cure to prove, to impress, or to convince. His cures were the natural expression of his being our God. The mystery of God's love is not that our pain is taken away, but that God first wants to share that pain with us. (p. 16) ↗

— Henri J. M. Nouwen Donald P. McNeill Douglas A. Morrison

#god #love

…unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#nature

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood] ↗

— Victor Hugo

#les-misérables #political #poverty #society #victor-hugo

A fish cannot drown in water, A bird does not fall in air. In the fire of creation, God doesn't vanish: The fire brightens. Each creature God made must live in its own true nature; How could I resist my nature, That lives for oneness with God? ↗

— Mechthild of Magdeburg

#god #inner-nature #transcendence #wind #nature

Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance... ↗

— Annie Dillard

#stillness #nature

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. ↗

— Adam Smith

#goodness #nature

Laws of nature have no physical properties of mass /energy. They are platonic truths in transcendent realm that create & govern the Universe. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#creation #creativity #deepak-chopra #energy #govern

When it comes to judging individuals, I do not like remarks such as 'too good to be true.' They speak as though one is rewarding the nature of evil. Yet, ironically, we still wonder where all the good people have gone. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bad-people #chances #discernment #evil #good

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world. ↗

— Henry Miller

#california #ecology #environment #good-neighbors #nature

How intense can be the longing to escape from the emptiness and dullness of human verbosity, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labour, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion! ↗

— Boris Pasternak

#peace #quiet #zhivago #music