I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance Throughout my being's limitless expanse, Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.
- Novalis
source: "Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy". Book by Géza von Molnár, p. 2, 1987.
topic: Stars, Past, Age, Twinkling, Expanse
If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.
- Walter Isaacson
source: Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.49, Simon and Schuster
topic: Practice, Discipline, Intuition, Expanse
I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.
- Charlotte Bronte
source: Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.40, Variocity
topic: Real, World, Fields, Expanse, Real Knowledge
We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death -- or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again -- may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.
- Marcel Proust
topic: Mean, Thinking, Doe, Connexion, Expanse
Every one must be struck with astonishment, when he first beholds one of these vast rings of coral-rock, often many leagues in diameter, here and there surmounted by a low verdant island with dazzling white shores, bathed on the outside by the foaming breakers of the ocean, and on the inside surrounding a calm expanse of water, which, from reflection, is of a bright but pale green color.
- Charles Darwin
topic: Nature, Ocean, Reflection, Expanse, Dazzling
There are few sights more pleasant to the eye, than a wide cotton field when it is in the bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.
- Solomon Northup
source: Solomon Northup, Harriet Beecher Stowe (2014). “Twelve Years A Slave: illustrated Original Edition With Bonus of Uncle Tom's Cabin”, p.87, Ageless Reads
topic: Eye, Sight, Light, Expanse, Cotton Fields
I’m aware that there is a bigger, far more complicated world out there than I’d ever realized, and just like the students at Beijing University, I’ve glimpsed it only fleetingly, peripherally. I’ve sensed the vast expanse of my own ignorance now. I feel antsy and constricted and a deep, almost sexual yearning for velocity, for some sort of raw, transcendent experience that I cannot even begin to articulate.
- Susan Jane Gilman
topic: Ignorance, Complicated World, Velocity, Beijing, Expanse
The things of God are of great import; and time, and experience,and careful, and ponderous, and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, oh man, if thou wilt lead a man unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanses of eternity; thou must commune with God!
- Joseph Smith, Jr.
topic: Men, Heaven, Mind, Imports, Expanse
Whatever your work and whatever its worth, No matter how strong or clever, Some one will sneer if you pause to hear, And scoff at your best endeavor. For the target art has a broad expanse, And wherever you chance to hit it, Though close be your aim to the bull's-eye fame, There are those who will never admit it.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
topic: Art, Strong, Clever, I Am Strong, Expanse
It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.
- Henry David Thoreau
source: Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.269, e-artnow
topic: Independent, Men, Thinking, Still Waters, Expanse
He was sailing over a boundless expanse of sea, with a blood-red sky above, and the angry waters, lashed into fury beneath, boiling and eddying up, on every side. There was another vessel before them, toiling and labouring in the howling storm: her canvas fluttering in ribbons from the mast.
- Charles Dickens
topic: Sky, Blood, Sea, Expanse, Toiling
When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogenous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.
- Mircea Eliade
source: "The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan". Book by John Daniel Dadosky, p. 89, 2004.
topic: Reality, Space, World, Expanse, Homogeneity
You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.
- A. D. Gordon
topic: Flower, Light, Land, Pettiness, Expanse
Nature does not conquer the world to God. It never has. It never will. In America, with its vast abounding wealth, its grand expanse of prairie, its reach of river, and its exuberant productiveness, there is danger that our riches will draw us away from God, and fasten us to earth; that they will make us not only rich, but mean; not only wealthy, but wicked. The grand corrective is the cross of Christ, seen in the sanctuary where the life and light of God are exhibited, and where the reverberation of the echoes from the great white throne are heard.
- Richard Salter Storrs
source: "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 522), 1895.
topic: Mean, Light, Rivers, Expanse, Reverberation
Imagine a limitless expanse of water: above and below, before and behind, right and left, everywhere there is water. In that water is placed a jar filled with water. There is water inside the jar and water outside, but the jar is still there. The 'I' is the jar.
- Ramakrishna
source: Ramakrishna, Mahendra Nath Gupta (1942). “The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna”, Ramakrishna Vivekanada Center
topic: Water, Jars, Imagine, Expanse, Above And Below
Confined on the ship, from which there is no escape, the madman is delivered to the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its thousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to everything. He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage. And the land he will come to is unknown—as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him.
- Michel Foucault
source: Michel Foucault (2001). “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, p.9, Psychology Press
topic: Country, Sea, Land, Expanse, Two Countries
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
- Charles Dickens
source: Great Expectations ch. 59 (1862 ed.)
topic: Morning, Light, Long Ago, Morning Mist, Expanse
