What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
Iris MurdochRead
I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
Interpretation
Sincere appreciation and devotion can elevate the ordinary to the sacred.
Iris Murdoch's quote suggests that the act of sincere worship or devotion can transform anything into something holy. This implies that holiness is not merely an inherent quality but can be cultivated through genuine appreciation and commitment, pointing to the power of perspective and intention in shaping our experiences and values.
In practice
In a speech about finding meaning in everyday life, this quote can illustrate how recognizing the sacred in the mundane enriches our experiences.
What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them.
The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.
The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s (God’s) ground…He [God] made the pleasure: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy [God] has produced, at at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He [God] has forbidden.
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people.
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