We walk through ourselves.

Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.

—James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

'the portals of discovery'

John Eglinton looked into the tangled glowworm of his lamp. 

—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could. 

—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

—James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

'the only true thing in life'

Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon likelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son?

—James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

What is that word known to all men?

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

—James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

'push on to a greater failure'

To me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth. It is the meaning of life—and the hope. The noblest is eternally the most tragic. The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers. Their stopping at success is the proof of their compromising insignificance. How petty their dreams must have been!

—Eugene O'Neill, quoted in Alfred & Barbara Gelb, O'Neill (1962)

The world is a necessary system.

I do not think that G.H. Hardy was talking nonsense when he insisted that the mathematician was discovering rather than creating, nor was it wholly nonsense for Kepler to exult that he was thinking God's thoughts after him. The world for me is a necessary system, and in the degree to which the thinker can surrender his thought to that system and follow it, he is in a sense participating in that which is timeless or eternal.

—Brand Blanshard, The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (ed. by Paul Arthur Schilpp 1980)

The Guardians of the Beautiful

As the last transcendentale, the beautiful guards the others and sets the seal on them: there is nothing true or good, in the long term, without the light of grace of that which is freely bestowed. And a Christianity which went along with modernity and subscribed merely to the true (faith as a system of correct propositions) or merely to the good (faith as that which is most useful and healthy for the subject) would be a Christianity knocked down from its own heights. But when the saints interpreted their existence in the light of God's greater glory, they were always the guardians of the beautiful.

—Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, Vol. 4: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity (1989)

'a complete renewal'

[Laevsky] wanted to think over his situation and was afraid to think. It frightened him to admit that the doctor had caught him in the deception he had so long and so thoroughly concealed from himself. Each time he thought of his future, he did not give free rein to his thoughts. He would get on the train and go—that solved the problem of his life, and he did not let his thoughts go any further. Like a faint, far-off light in a field, from time to time the thought glimmered in his head that somewhere, in one of Petersburg's lanes, in the distant future, in order to break with Nadezhda Fyodorovna and pay his debts, he would have to resort to a small lie. He would lie only once, and then a complete renewal would come. And that was good: at the cost of a small lie, he would buy a big truth.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Duel" (1891) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'raptures over nature'

"But just look at this panorama!" Samoilenko said to him as the horses turned left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into view, and the river itself glistened—yellow, turbid, mad ...

"I don't see anything good in it, Sasha," replied Laevsky. "To constantly go into raptures over nature is to show the paucity of your imagination. All these brooks and cliffs are nothing but trash compared to what my imagination can give me."

The carriages were now driving along the riverbank. The high, mountainous banks gradually converged, the valley narrowed, and ahead was what looked like a gorge; the stony mountain they were driving along had been knocked together by nature out of huge stones, which crushed each other with such terrible force that Samoilenko involuntarily grunted each time he looked at them. The somber and beautiful mountain was cut in places by narrow crevices and gorges that breathed dampness and mysteriousness on the travelers; through the gorges, other mountains could be seen, brown, pink, purple, smoky, or flooded with bright light. From time to time, as they drove past the gorges, they could hear water falling from a height somewhere and splashing against the rocks.

"Ah, cursed mountains," sighed Laevsky, "I'm so sick of them!"

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Duel" (1891) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'three fingers...or the traditional two'

Devout Russians considered crucial such matters as how many hallelujahs were to be shouted at various points in the service, how many consecrated loaves were to be at the offertory or on the altar, the spelling of Jesus' name (from Isus to Iisus) and, most notably, whether, in making the sign of the cross, one extended the newly decreed three fingers (symbolizing the Trinity) or the traditional two fingers (symbolizing the dual nature of Christ). If one was convinced that the world was only a preparation for paradise or the inferno, and that personal salvation depended on the punctilious observance of church ritual, then crossing oneself with two fingers instead of three could make the difference between spending eternity in heaven or in hellfire.

—Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980)

Hegel would say...

Swift, Macaulay, and Shaw would say that André was hanged. Bradley would say that he was killed. Bosanquet would say that he died. Kant would say that his mortal existence reached its termination. Hegel would say that a finite determination of infinity had been further determined by its own negation.

—Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style (1954)

They Will Shine Like Lightning

For as the body of the Lord was glorified when he climbed the mount and was transfigured into the divine glory and into infinite light, so also the bodies of the saints are glorified and shine like lightning. Just as the interior glory of Christ covered his body and shone completely, in the same way also in the saints the interior power of Christ in them in the day will be poured out exteriorly upon their bodies. For even now at this time they are in their minds participators of his substance and nature. For it is written: "He that sanctifies and the one who is sanctified are of one" (Heb. 2:11); and: "The glory that you have given me, I have given them" (Jn 17:22). Similarly, as many lamps are lighted from the one, same fire, so also it is necessary that the bodies of the saints, which are members of Christ, become the same which Christ himself is.

—(Pseudo-)Macarius,Homily 15:38 (circa 390)