“Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat?”

Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.

Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being.

We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it.

We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.

Now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.

Withdraw into yourself and look.

Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe

Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

From the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body’s experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.

We may treat of the Soul as in the body – whether it be set above it or actually within it – since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.Now from this relation.

We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.

We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.

The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.

As in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life.

In actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.

I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.

If we can embrace the adventure and risk and equip our churches to lay down their lives and abandon their inherent loss-aversion.

If we could be freed from our aversion to loss, our whole outlook on risk would change.

When we accept life as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we’re experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.

The problem is grasping the clock. So what do I do? Let it go, lay it aside – put it down gently without any kind of aversion. Then I can pick it up again, see what time it is and lay it aside when necessary.

This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate ‘me,’ and in turn the sense of ‘me’ strengthens itself this way.