Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.
Interpretation
Focus your thoughts on positivity rather than negativity to foster personal growth.
This quote by Evelyn Underhill emphasizes the importance of directing one's thoughts toward positive outcomes instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of life. It encourages individuals to recognize and take responsibility for their misdeeds, learn from them, and move forward with a more constructive mindset, rather than being consumed by guilt or regret.
In practice
Use this quote in a motivational speech to encourage resilience during challenging times.
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.
A man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.
Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull into a cup for others to drink wine from. In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man, who doesn't know what he's about to do!
I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.
As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes.
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.
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