He was somebody who made me think, I suppose, about the contemplative life. I've always been a city fellow, but I've often had vague thoughts about 'checking out' and perhaps going into a monastery and just seeing what it was like. ↗
It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard! ↗
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. ↗
You will soon find that I am a bit obsessive about my work. And that is a little sad, one often feels strangely restricted, not finding time to simmer, although one actually has many interests. ↗
Carrying out the thing, getting it to the point when one might say: There, now it is good - that point is hard to reach. Often, one sets very high goals for oneself. Perhaps too high. ↗
I do not feel certain until I have confronted my initial solution with other solutions - although in fact the first solution often proves to be the right one. ↗
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. ↗
