benfridge • read

“Details are nothing: facts are nothing: the important things are the dependences, the transmissions of influence, the connecting links, the exchanges, which constitute the life of nature. Now, behind all these dependences, is the primal dependence; at the spot to which all connections converge is the supreme Bond; at the highest point of all transmissions, the Spring; beneath the exchanges the Gift; beneath the systole and diastole of the world, the Heart, the boundless Heart of Being. Must not the mind refer back to it unceasingly, and never for a minute lose touch with what is thus the All of all things, and consequently of all knowledge?” “When silence takes possession of you; when far from the racket of the human highway the sacred fire flames up in the stillness; when peace, which is the tranquillity of order, puts order in your thoughts, feelings, and investigations, you are in the supreme disposition for learning; you can bring your materials together; you can create; you are definitely at your working point; it is not the moment to dwell on wretched trifles, to half live while time runs by, and to sell heaven for nothings.” “The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.” "You want to produce an intellectual work? Start by creating within yourself a zone of silence, a habit of withdrawal, a will of dispossession, of detachment, that makes you entirely available for this work; acquire this state of soul, free from the weight of desire and one’s own will, which is the state of grace of the intellectual. Without this, you will not do anything; in any case, you will not do anything of value." "A chain compressed by narrow margins will go further. The discipline of a craft is a great school: it teaches the man of studies to expand his possibilities. Coerced, he concentrates more, learns the value of time, enthusiastically takes refuge in those rare hours when, duty fulfilled, he embraces his ideal, hours when he enjoys the chosen action, after the action imposed by harsh existence."