On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.
Interpretation
Hurry and impatience indicate a lack of mastery and understanding in any endeavor.
Evelyn Underhill highlights that in all aspects of life, whether mundane tasks or spiritual practices, a sense of urgency and impatience reflects a lack of experience and depth. True proficiency and understanding come from patience and the willingness to engage fully with the task at hand, rather than rushing through it.
In practice
This quote can be used in a workshop on productivity to emphasize the importance of patience.
Nothing in all nature is so lovely and so vigorous, so perfectly at home in its environment, as a fish in the sea. Its surroundings give to it a beauty, quality, and power which are not its own. We take it out, and at once a poor, limp dull thing, fit for nothing, is gasping away its life. So the soul, sunk in God, living the life of prayer, is supported, filled, transformed in beauty, by a vitality and a power which are not its own.
As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire.
God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer.
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. 'I come to seek God because I need Him', may be an adequate formula for prayer. 'I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet', is the only possible formula for worship.
I have an idea heaven will be both absolutely happy and absolutely dark, to protect us from the blaze of God.
What is the next step, the practical application? —I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.
Not till the fire is dying in the grate, Look we for any kinship with the stars. Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold, And the great price we paid for it full worth: We have it only when we are half earth. Little avails that coinage to the old!
In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced
If we become increasingly humble about how little we know, we may be more eager to search.
I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
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