Explore Quotes by Thomas Traherne

Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to others, and others love to us.

This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of God's righteous Kingdom.

To think well is to serve God in the interior court.

You are as prone to love as the sun is to shine; it being the most delightful and natural employment of the soul of humans.

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.

Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.

An empty book is like an Infant's soul, in which anything may be written.

And every stone and every star a tongue, And every gale of wind a curious song. The Heavens were an oracle, and spoke Divinity: the Earth did undertake The office of a priest; and I being dumb (Nothing besides was dumb) all things did come With voices and instructions.

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flowers in your veins,_x000D_till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and_x000D_perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than_x000D_so, because men and women are in it who are every one sole heirs as well_x000D_as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight, as misers do in gold, and_x000D_kings in scepters, you never enjoy the world.

A little grit in the eye destroyeth the sight of the very heavens, and a little malice or envy a world of joys. One wry principle in the mind is of infinite consequence.

You never know yourself till you know more than your body.

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it.

We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us.

We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in the present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future.

It is of the nobility of man's soul that he is insatiable: for he hath a benefactor so prone to give, that he delighteth in us for asking. Do not your inclinations tell you that the WORLD is yours? Do you not covet all? Do you not long to have it; to enjoy it; to overcome it? To what end do men gather riches, but to multiply more? Do they not like Pyrrhus the King of Epire, add house to house and lands to lands, that they may get it all?

Let those parents that desire Holy Children learn to make them possessors of Heaven and Earth betimes; to remove silly objects from before them, to magnify nothing but what is great indeed, and to talk of God to them, and of His works and ways. before they can either speak or go.

Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.

More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness.