Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows.
Emanuel SwedenborgRead
True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.
Interpretation
True charity involves helping others selflessly, without expecting anything in return.
This quote by Emanuel Swedenborg emphasizes the purest form of charity, which is characterized by a genuine desire to assist others without any anticipation of reward or recognition. It suggests that the highest expression of kindness lies in acts of service motivated solely by the well-being of others, rather than personal gain. This idea challenges common assumptions about altruism and encourages a deeper understanding of what it means to be truly charitable.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about community service to highlight the importance of selfless giving.
Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows.
It can in no sense be said that heaven is outside of any one; it is within ... and a man, also, so far as he receives heaven, is a recipient, a heaven, and an angel.
I have seen a thousand times that Angels are human form, or men, for I have conversed with them as man to man, sometimes with one alone, sometimes with many in company.
Hell and Heaven are near man, yes, in him; and every man after death goes to that Hell or heaven in which he was, or to his spirit, during his abode in the world.
For in every particular of the Word there is an internal sense which treats of things spiritual and heavenly, not of things natural and worldly, such as are treated of in the sense of the letter.
If love is not married to wisdom (or if goodness is not married to truth), it cannot accomplish anything.
The emotional reaction in the peak experience has a special flavor of wonder, of awe, of reverence, of humility and surrender before the experience as before something great.
I am so afraid of people's words.They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?
If I define my neighbor as the one I must go out to look for, on the highways and byways, in the factories and slums, on the farms and in the mines, then my world changes.
Individual liberty depends upon keeping government under control.
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