Robert Reese > Robert's Quotes

“Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Solitude sometimes is best society.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
― Blaise Pascal

“The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.”
― Blaise Pascal

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”
― Albert Einstein

“Dancers are the athletes of God.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you have not chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”
― William Law

“Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life.”
― William Law

“The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity, but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least deserve it.”
― William Law

“Let the Christian world forget or depart from this true gospel salvation; let anything else be trusted but the cross of Christ and the Spirit of Christ; and then, though churches and preachers and prayers and sacraments are everywhere in plenty, nothing can come of them but a Christian kingdom of pagan vices, along with a mouth-professed belief in the Apostles’ Creed and the communion of saints. To this sad truth all Christendom both at home and abroad bears full witness. Who need be told that no corruption or depravity of human nature, no kind of pride, wrath, envy, malice, and self-love; no sort of hypocrisy, falseness, cursing, gossip, perjury, and cheating; no wantonness of lust in every kind of debauchery, foolish jesting, and worldly entertainment, is any less common all over Christendom, both popish and Protestant, than towns and villages. What vanity, then, to count progress in terms of numbers of new and lofty cathedrals, chapels, sanctuaries, mission stations, and multiplied new membership lists, when there is no change in this undeniable departure of men’s hearts from the living God. Yea, let the whole world be converted to Christianity of this kind, and let every citizen be a member of some Protestant or Catholic church and mouth the creed every Lord’s day; and no more would have been accomplished toward bringing the kingdom of God among men than if they had all joined this or that philosophical society or social fraternity.”
― William Law, The Power of the Spirit

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry VIII

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,
To die upon the hand I love so well.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“You never fail until you stop trying.”
― Albert Einstein

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
― Albert Einstein

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”
― Albert Einstein

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
― Albert Einstein

“Time is an illusion.”
― Albert Einstein

“Mozart's music was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.”
― Albert Einstein

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.”
― Blaise Pascal

“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“They can be like the sun, words.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.”
― St. John of the Cross, The Poems of St. John of the Cross

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”
― Thomas Merton