More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.
Thomas TraherneRead
To think well is to serve God in the interior court.
Interpretation
Thinking deeply and wisely is a way to serve a higher purpose or divine presence.
This quote by Thomas Traherne suggests that the act of profound and thoughtful contemplation is not only a personal endeavor but also a spiritual duty. It emphasizes the value of intellectual and spiritual engagement as a means of connecting with and serving a higher power within oneself and the universe.
In practice
During a meditation retreat, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of deep thinking.
More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.
We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in the present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future.
Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.
To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious.
You never know yourself till you know more than your body.
Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.
I am simultaneously and contradictorily both happy and unhappy: 'to succeed' or 'to fail' have for me only ephemeral, contingent meanings (this does not stop my desires and sorrows from being violent ones); what impels me, secretly and obstinately, is not tactical: I accept and I affirm, irrespective of the true and the false, of success and failure; I am withdrawn from all finality, I live according to chance.
If life's journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own.
We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.
We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.
BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
As long as a human being worries about when he will die, and what he has that is his,_x000D_ all of his works are zero._x000D_ When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead,_x000D_ then the work of the Teacher is over.
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