Write Spirit

Ancient wisdom and modern inspiration

Archive for the ‘aphorism’ Category

Mystic Emotion – Albert Einstein

albert_einstein

 

“The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties – this knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.”

— Albert Einstein

John Keats – When I have fears that I may cease to be

John keats

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
  That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
  Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

 

– John Keats

photo: Tejvan

Walt Whitman – I Celebrate Myself

I Celebrate Myself - Walt Whitman

Songs of Myself by Walt Whitman

During the American civil war, Walt Whitman worked as a nurse after being profoundly affected by the sight of wounded solider. Despite the privations and horrors of war, his spirit always sought to see the unity in nature and life. He was influenced by Deism and Transcendentalism. He saw all religions and spiritual paths having validity, though he did not attach himself to any religion.

“I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception”

– Walt Whitman [1. With Antecedents, Walt Whitman]

His epic  Leaves of Grass is seen as a major element in American literature, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

“I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “LEAVES OF GRASS.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson [2. In letter thanking Whitman for a copy of Leaves of Grass. (21 July 1855) ]

Sri Chinmoy writes of Walt Whitman

“Born ahead of his time, Whitman pointed to his nation and to the world the Path of Tomorrow. And, by the Grace of the Supreme, the dawn-rays of Tomorrow have already become visible, however faintly, on today’s horizon.”

– Sri Chinmoy [3. Sri Chinmoy, America In Her Depths, Agni Press, 1973.]

Photo: Sharani.

Footnotes