All Quotes

"We worshiped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of 'belonging and believing' instead of a religion of transformation."

"The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West."

"Sikhs believe that human beings spend their time in a cycle of birth, life, and rebirth. They share this belief with followers of other Indian religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The quality of each particular life depends on the law of Karma. Karma sets the quality of a life according to how well or badly a person behaved in their previous life. The only way out of this cycle, which all faiths regard as painful, is to achieve a total knowledge of and union with God."

"Stillness is an undisturbed state of the intellect,"

"Paradoxically, by mastering oneself, one becomes more open to others, indirectly becoming generous, since “bonum est diffusivum sui”. This is magnanimity, the great ancient virtue whose name has been lost today. (p. 133)"

"Umberto Galimberti, L'età della tecnica e la fine della storia, Orthotes, Napoli, 2021. ISBN 978-88-93-14314-1."

"V.S. Naipaul, in his recent book, India: A Million Mutinies Now, provides some intimate glimpses into the minds of some of the actors in the Punjab tragedy. He tells us of an interview which he heard on the British Radio and which Bhindranwale had given from the premises of the Golden Temple undergoing fortification just before the Blue Star Operation: in this interview, Bhindranwale had said that Sikhism “was a revealed religion; and the Sikhs were people of the Book.” Naipaul says that he was “struck then by the attempt to equate Sikhism with Christianity; to separate it from its speculative Hindu aspects, even from its guiding idea of salvation as union with God and freedom from transmigration.” But at that time, he thought that it was merely “an attempt, by a man intellectually far away, to make his cause more acceptable to his foreign interviewer.” He did not realize that the attempt to give a Semitic rendering to their religions is an old one and is not limited to Sikhism alone, nor to men “intellectually far away.” It has very much to do with the circumstances in which the world came to be dominated by people of Semitic religions. During this period, monolatry, prophetism, revelation - concepts of little spiritual validity or worth - acquired a great political clout and social prestige and these began to be adopted by many subject people. They wanted their religions to look like the Semitic ones with a single God, a Revelation, a Prophet or Saviour, and a single Church or Ummah."

"The mystery of our union with God affected by the Eucharist, is a union more intimate than the human mind can conceive."

"Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity, so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace without any other arms but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for himself, and our neighbours for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory."

"“You know what, there are worse things than an ice cream. I mean, masarap naman ang Cornetto, ‘di ba?"

"“Of course! I don’t mind it at all. I think, as long as things are positive, and I think an ice cream is pretty positive, I’m okay with it.”"

"“I also believe that if they see their mom only at home then they would think they can only be either or, but we believe it’s not true. With good planning and good organization, you can actually have both. I want to show them and empower them to make decisions like that.”"

"No matter how quietly I tried to replace the spoon and glass top of the container of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on Nonna's dining table, one or the other always clinked. If I was lucky, the animated conversations in the living room masked the clink and no adult voice called out to inquire who might be in the dining room tasting the cheese. My earliest memories of irresistible temptation invoked the pursuit of Parmesan, soft and nutty, sitting like a sacrament in its sacred vessel on the linen cloth."

"The process of elaboration of parmesan cheese begins with skimming the milk collected the previous evening; fresh milk and fermented are added. This mixture is placed in a copper vat at 32–35 °C to form the , which is finely cut. Afterward, it is heated to 50 °C while being stirred until it forms a paste. The paste is then placed in cheesecloth for draining. Subsequently, the cheese is shaped in a mold; and a marking band is applied. It is then placed in a metal mold and added to a container with a saline solution. Afterward, it is aged for 12–30 months."

"The classic Parmesan is said to come from in , or , or Sicily, although it is also found in Calabria. The first mention of something resembling an eggplant Parmesan is from Il saporetto by (1387–1440): the recipe refers to Parmigiana cheese. In his book Il cuoco gallant, published in 1786, the eighteenth-century Neapolitan chef Vincenzo Corrado mentions that eggplant can be cooked alla Parmigiana, meaning that the eggplant was seasoned with , herbs, and other s, and grated Parmigiano cheese. It was the covered with a cream sauce made with egg yolks and baked in the oven."

"O that I were a veil upon that face, To hide it from the world; methinks I could Envy the very Sun, for gazing on you!"

"In spite of his resolute party attitude, he succeeded in gaining and retaining not only the confidence of his political friends, but also the high regard of his political opponents."

"There is not in the circle of human happiness a cup of honey that has not its drop of gall."

"In our poor human nature, joy and sorrow often manifest themselves by the same symptoms; and a piece of good news will agitate us in the same way as a piece of bad news."

"In his short tales he is most successful when he indulges in the sentimental; he is less attractive when he gives utterance to his pessimistic feeling."

"Umberto Galimberti, L'ospite inquietante. Il nichilismo e i giovani, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milano, 2007. ISBN 978-88-07-17143-7."

"The institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from existing national parliaments. Indirectly elected Senators would retain their national parliamentary careers, while acquiring closer knowledge of European institutions and the habit of co-operating with each other. Such Senators ought to be leading national politicians, politicians with an experience and stature not typical of European MPs today."

"If we want to understand the distinctive constitution of Europe, we must go back to its religious foundations. For the moral beliefs which Christianity fostered still underpin civil society in Europe, the institutions that surround us."

"The failure of utilitarianism to address a will in which it does not altogether believe stands in sharp contrast to the mainstream of liberal thought represented by the great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. For Kant, liberalism was first and last about the will....Like Christianity, Kantian liberalism identifies the greatest need of humans, as self-conscious beings, as the need for a rule of conduct, the means of governing oneself as a free and responsible agent.Modern economism's failure is that it does not face up to this question of self-government or address the issue of what is required to make the empire of the will legitimate. For the utilitarian maxim that pleasure or happiness should be maximized fails to acknowledge the need to govern the empire of the will. It provides instead an aggregative criterion for public decision-making, a criterion which is defective because it does not provide for the claims of justice. But that failure over justice reflects, in turn, utilitarianism's failure to distinguish between persons as separate and autonomous agents, as rational agents who need a rule by which to regulate their own wills. Utilitarianism merely aggregates satisfactions, looking upon society as a kind of collective self."

"We have become victims of our own success. For we are in danger of taking this primacy of the individual as something ‘obvious’ or ‘inevitable’, something guaranteed by things outside ourselves rather than by historical convictions and struggles. Of course, every human has his or her own body and mind. But does this establish that human equality is decreed by nature rather than culture?Nature, in the form of genetic endowment, is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. A legal foundation for equality, in the form of fundamental rights for every person, is also required....Widespread complacency about the victory of an individualized model of society reflects a worrying decline in historical understanding."

"The Jewish sense of time was...unilinear rather than cyclical. Even the repeated lapses of Israel into idolatry did not dispel belief in God’s overall control and direction of events."

"Only the pride of the intellect could suppose that the human will can be completely self-determining. The incarnation revealed that something more is needed. ‘My mind, questioning itself upon its own powers, feels that it cannot rightly trust its own report.’ Augustine’s conception of the self became a subtle mixture of autonomy and dependence."

"In the twelfth century, reason began to lose the ontologically privileged position it had been accorded by an aristocratic society. Its propositions were open, at least in principle, to equal scrutiny, grounded in a shared faith. (Did not St Bernard complain that under Abelard’s influence matters of the faith were being discussed at the crossroads?) The role of reason was being democratized. Reason ceased to be something that used people, and became something people used."

"Paul and Augustine transformed Jewish belief in a divine will directed at a ‘chosen’ people. They universalized the claims of that will and internalized it, making it available to all of humanity. In doing so, they created the potential for ‘Christian liberty’, a rightful power for individuals. By combining the assumption of human equality with the need to discover the divine will, a new relationship with deity became possible, one that was personal rather than tribal. Yet if Paul and Augustine conjured up a vision of moral freedom, it was the twelfth-century canonists who converted that vision into a formal legal system founded on natural rights."

"Christianity changed the ground of human identity. It was able to do that because of the way it combined Jewish monotheism with an abstract universalism that had roots in later Greek philosophy. By emphasizing the moral equality of humans, quite apart from any social roles they might occupy, Christianity changed ‘the name of the game’. Social rules became secondary. They followed and, in a crucial sense, had to be understood as subordinate to a God-given human identity, something all humans share equally. Thus, humans were to live in ‘two cities’ at the same time."

"What is the crux of secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies that there is a sphere in which each should be free to make his or her own decisions, a sphere of conscience and free action. That belief is summarized in the central value of classical liberalism: the commitment to ‘equal liberty’. Is this indifference or non-belief? Not at all. It rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the ‘blind’ following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others.This is also the central egalitarian moral insight of Christianity. It stands out from St Paul’s contrast between ‘Christian liberty’ and observance of the Jewish law. Enforced belief was, for Paul and many early Christians, a contradiction in terms. Strikingly, in its first centuries Christianity spread by persuasion, not by force of arms — a contrast to the early spread of Islam."

"Being curious is an absolute rule of life. If you don’t have that, I don’t know what you're doing in this music."

"The magnanimous person, in fact, should not be confused with the generous person: he is someone who aims for great things and, by committing himself to this, produces good things and, if he is strong enough, an overabundance of good that benefits everyone. (p. 133)"

"Even while I was studying at [Manhattan School of Music], I was learning about melody and rhythm, and theory, and harmony, and all the great composers like Scriabin, Khatchaturian, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev...Bach and Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Schoenberg, Alan Berg...Boulez, Stockhausen...We would listen, for example, to Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, or a Bach Cantata or the Prelude and Fugue, and so on. And then the teacher, Ludmila Ulehla, picked the essential 20 composers in music history, from...Mozart...and so on, up through...Debussy, Scriabin...and Stockhousen...Eventually, my goal became to put all that I had absorbed from these studies into jazz, into, say, "Stella By Starlight," to integrate the harmony, the melodic ideas, and so on. I continued doing that for about twenty years afterwards. I spent hours and hours at the piano, sleeping as little [as] three hours a night. But I loved it, so it wasn't arduous work."

"You must remember that it was a different time...It was before everyone was looking into their smartphones. There were computers but it wasn't such a dominant vibe in the air. People talked to each other, met in bars, and went out to hear music...In Greenwich Village...there were at least six clubs within a few walking minutes...Around that time there were at least 10 functioning clubs just in Manhattan, not even counting Brooklyn, that featured music seven nights a week...People would go out to the the clubs, not just musicians. There was a real sense of community...We were very lucky to live in this time."

"Very often the things that we consider to be new are not new. They're just new combinations or reanimations and reimaginations of things that have already been done, put together in a different way."

"The serenity of our faces and the happiness of our hearts are the greatest testimony to the appearance of majesty. For there you have the most reliable witnesses of our sentiments. For that which is harbored in the heart shines forth as though through a window, and that which you cannot hear because of this speaker’s lack of eloquence can be perceived through comments from the populace and from the eyes of everyone here just as joy is palpable in the looks of those who are rejoicing. Thus it is that, since everyone is over. come with incredible joy, and you with your joyous gaze have brought kudos and felicity, all men think that this illustrious day should not only be marked, as they say with a white stone, but everyone thinks the day should be commemorated each year with solemn honors. For no matter how ignorant one may be by nature, is there anyone who would not embrace the memory of the queen of the Sarmatians? Who would not marvel at the greatness of her august and holy presence? Who would not worship and revere her as though she were a goddess?In order to respond to so many distinguished and renowned women, which I can do, I shall say that the saying "the fickle herd can feed on heavenly air" certainly can never be, since, while the divine beauty of your mind and body has slipped away from my heart and mind, the memory of your name will remain so deeply ingrained in everyone’s mind that no age will ever obliterate it.But to say something myself to celebrate the greatness of your fame, which has traveled to the ends of the earth while I have remained silent, I would gladly spend all the days of my life. Nor is there anything that could please me more or that I could hope for more than that, not because I think your name would be embellished by my work and industry, but so that in glorifying you I might hope that my life too might be consigned to immortality."

"Colin Blakely — Sir Horace Blatt"

"The magnanimous person does not look at others, not because he underestimates them, but because he finds his own measure in the task he has set himself. (p. 133)."

"I am almost reluctant to pray for Mrs. Peter. She was so good, so pure, that while joining in the solemn supplication just breathed, and knowing that it is a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins, if they die in sin, I do believe that you have lying here the remains of a saint, and I would rather myself pray to her than for her."

"Christianity has altered the pagan soul. When the dream of a world without pain appeared, we could no longer adapt to this pain, even though we believe that a world without pain will never exist. Consciousness has been visited by a dream that can no longer be erased, and even if we believe it to be unlikely, we still want it to exist."

"In the Gospel of Luke, for example, we find a beautiful image of happiness, in which the Virgin Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who, like Mary, is pregnant. It then happens that, at the sight of Mary, the child in Elizabeth's womb begins to leap. Think of the motion of joy as this “jumping”!"

"Francis de Sales concedes nothing to the pagan style, which, moreover, has long since abandoned its tragic guise in ancient schools."

"“'Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usus”': life is not given as property to anyone, but “'for use”' to everyone. (p. 3)"

"If we want to talk about freedom, we can say that the more we gain knowledge of the processes that determine us, the more we are able to be free. (p. 8)"

"We humans, as singular entities, are finite powers, and in order to make the most of the power that we are, we must know how to manage it, to become its masters. This and nothing else is what it means to take ownership of life. (p. 8)"

"If desire stimulates invention, it can, however, lead us to a presumption of omnipotence and thus become a cause of deception. It makes us forget that we are finite powers: in fact, our power is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; therefore, as Spinoza would say, we do not have absolute power to adapt things outside ourselves to our use (ad nostrum usum adaptandi). We are therefore destabilised from within and without: by the impulses that press upon us and by the affections that condition us from outside. And since we do not know how powerful we are, desire manages to set us in motion without our knowledge, bypassing our consciousness. Proof of this is the fact that we often find ourselves agitated, upset, or even happy, without knowing why. Hence an instabilitas that we must govern. This is why desire, which is positive in itself, should not be passively indulged. However, it should not be denied either: it must simply be well managed. We need to measure the multiple powers that agitate us. In the words of Nietzsche, “greatness means giving direction”. To do this, virtues are necessary. (pp. 18-19)"

"Being virtuous means putting oneself in a position to decide and therefore not easily yielding to external influences. As we can see, virtue has nothing to do with renouncing desire, but rather with controlling it in order to avoid dependence. Unfortunately, centuries of teaching renunciation have transformed what was a technical expedient – the ancients called it an exercise – into a value, to the point of making the very idea of “control of the passions” ambiguous. This has led to the identification of passions with evil, and hence to the logical consequence of eradicating them. This is an impossible task, and one in which all pedagogies that have attempted to achieve it have failed: they have not eradicated passions at all, but have only generated perversions. (pp. 22-23)"

"Virtues are thus losing their traits of self-denial and taking on those of self-realisation. And, as was already the case for the ancients, happiness, far from being conceived as a reward for virtue, tends to coincide with its exercise. (p. 38)"

"But good can never be imposed: it must be continually sought and chosen each time. (p. 43)"