Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
Fulton J. SheenRead
When we try to make everything clear, we make everything confused. If, however, we admit one mysterious thing in the universe, then everything else becomes clear in the light of that. The sun is so bright, so mysterious, that one cannot look at it, and yet in the light of the sun everything else is seen.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Embracing mystery can bring clarity to our understanding of the world.
The quote by Fulton J. Sheen suggests that in our attempts to impose clarity on all aspects of life, we often end up creating confusion. By acknowledging and accepting the existence of mystery—represented by the sun—we can illuminate our understanding of other things, as the sun, while overwhelming in brightness, allows us to see the world around us with greater clarity.
Themes
MysteryClarityUnderstandingConfusionSun
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about philosophy, one might use this quote to explain the nature of understanding.
More from Fulton J. Sheen
All quotes →A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!
Fulton J. SheenRead
No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
Fulton J. SheenRead
The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Similar quotes
We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
Colum MccannRead
The State is concentric, but the individual is eccentric.
James JoyceRead
A dark cloud is no sign that the sun has lost his light; and dark black convictions are no arguments that God has laid aside His mercy.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
Edmund BurkeRead
Only Americans can hurt America.
Dwight D. EisenhowerRead
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
Edgar Allan PoeRead