Among irrational animals the love of the offspring and of the parents for each other is extraordinary because God, who created them, compensated for the deficiency of reason by the superiority of their senses.
Interpretation
Saint Basil highlights the extraordinary bond of love among animals, suggesting that they have a deep connection that compensates for their lack of reason.
In this quote, Saint Basil reflects on the profound love that exists among animals, particularly between parents and their offspring. He suggests that although these creatures may lack human-like reasoning abilities, they possess heightened senses that cultivate an extraordinary emotional connection. This underscores the idea that love is a fundamental force in nature, bridging gaps created by cognitive limitations.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a talk about animal rights to emphasize the emotional bonds among animal families.
Now, if you notice how the swan, putting its neck down into the deep water, brings up food for itself from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, in that He gave it a neck longer than its feet for this reason, that it might, as if lowering a sort of fishing line, procure the food hidden in the deep water.
When you have become God's in the measure he desires, then he himself will bestow you upon others; unless, to your greater glory, he chooses to keep you all to himself.
What is there astonishing in the death of a mortal? But we are grieved at his dying before his time. Are we sure that this was not his time? We do not know how to pick and choose what is good for our souls, or how to fix the limits of the life of man.
I heard many discourses which were good for the soul, but I could not discover in the case of any one of the teachers that his life was worthy of his words.
To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.
If every man took only what was sufficient for his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor.
I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.
I can make the earth stop in its tracks. I made the blue cars go away. I can make myself invisible or small. I can become gigantic & reach the farthest things. I can change the course of nature. I can place myself anywhere in space or time. I can summon the dead. I can perceive events on other worlds, in my deepest inner mind, & in the minds of others. I can I am
The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.
He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.
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