Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow... even if that someone is yourself!
PlatoRead
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that striving for holiness and wisdom brings us closer to divinity.
In this quote, Plato conveys the idea that human beings should aspire to transcend earthly existence and achieve a state that aligns with divine qualities. This transformation involves embodying virtues such as holiness, justice, and wisdom, which are attributes associated with the divine. The act of 'flying away' symbolizes a spiritual ascent towards a higher moral and intellectual state, suggesting that the pursuit of these virtues is a pathway to becoming more godlike.
In practice
In a sermon discussing personal growth and spirituality.
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow... even if that someone is yourself!
Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.
...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty.
Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
The will to domination is a ravenous beast. There are never enough warm bodies to satiate its monstrous hunger. Once alive, this beast grows and grows, feeding on all the life around it, scouring the earth to find new sources of nourishment. This beast lives in each man who battens on female servitude.
When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
Let no man fear to die, we love to sleep all, and death is but the sounder sleep.
God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.
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