The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead... his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein
Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are
too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond; too arrogant to still
our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry
and goodwill if we would make that transition; for the process involves a
veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement
of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the
notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged
with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the
gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a
stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of
morning-glory: where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every
thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life.
- Evelyn Underhill
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
- C.S. Lewis
