Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.
Interpretation
Experience gained from mistakes can lead to profound insights.
This quote by Eric Hoffer suggests that the wisdom and knowledge possessed by those labeled as saints often come from their past experiences as sinners. It highlights the idea that encountering challenges and making mistakes can provide valuable lessons that contribute to personal growth and understanding, ultimately shaping a deeper compassion or insight that can be shared with others.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth at a workshop, this quote can illustrate how overcoming past mistakes leads to wisdom.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
Living out here, I have found that many creatures would prefer not to fight. But if your first instinct is to reach for your sword, you will never discover that.
Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little
You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.
Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.
Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.
I know this for sure, that doing good actually makes you better.
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