If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that true kindness comes during moments of vulnerability, such as sleep, when we cannot inflict harm on each other.
Elizabeth Von Arnim reflects on the notion that if angels existed, they would appreciate humanity in its peaceful, unguarded state during sleep. This emphasizes the beauty of human nature when it is free from the conflict and unkindness that often occurs in waking hours. The quote highlights a mercy in our daily lives—a natural respite from hostility when we are too exhausted to continue our unkind behaviors.
In practice
During a meditation session, one might reflect on the importance of kindness illustrated by this quote.
[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.
On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of the forest, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me.
I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring a little lower still, and it merely goes out.
For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn’t able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.
Originality is being different from oneself, not others.
I don't believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.
While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one's own well-being.
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