It should not be expected that what is spiritual can be brought before the eyes, before the senses. It must be experienced inwardly and spiritually.
Rudolf SteinerRead
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled - thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.
Interpretation
Love transcends differing opinions and is essential for true understanding among people.
Rudolf Steiner emphasizes that love is a unifying force that can bridge the gaps created by differing opinions. He suggests that for humanity to progress, it is crucial to foster love and understanding, as the absence of this connection renders discussions of development meaningless.
In practice
A speaker at a peace conference might use this quote to advocate for unity among diverse cultures.
It should not be expected that what is spiritual can be brought before the eyes, before the senses. It must be experienced inwardly and spiritually.
In ancient, prehistoric times, the temples of the spirit were outwardly visible, but today, when our life has become so unspiritual, they no longer exist where we can see them with our physical eyes. Yet spiritually they are still present everywhere, and whoever seeks can find them.
Only a person who has passed through the gate of humility can ascend to the heights of the spirit.
Most actions derive not from your own initiative but from your family circumstances, your education, your calling, and so on. You must therefore give up a little time to performing actions which derive from yourself alone. They need not be important; quite insignificant actions fulfill the same purpose.
We will not find the inner strength to evolve to a higher level if we do not inwardly develop this profound feeling that there is something higher than ourselves.
Man only becomes independent of this physical world when he learns to consider the objects around him as symbols. He must, for this reason, seek to acquire a moral relationship to them.
He who would love much has also much to suffer.
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses. All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom; his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet constraint he led me wherever he pleased.
You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;_x000D_ _x000D_ But yet you draw not iron, for my heart_x000D_ _x000D_ Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,_x000D_ _x000D_ And I shall have no power to follow you.
Love is the fire that warms our lives with unparalleled joy and divine hope. Love should be our walk and our talk.
At that moment of love, a moment when passion is absolutely silent under omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, pure seraphic Marius, would have been more capable of visiting a woman of the streets than of raising Cosette’s dress above the ankle. Once on a moonlit night, Cosette stopped to pick up something from the ground, her dress loosened and revealed the swelling of her breasts. Marius averted his eyes.
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