Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it: ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of having an inner ideal, which nurtures great thoughts and actions.
Louis Pasteur's quote suggests that an individual who possesses and adheres to a divine ideal—whether in the realms of art, science, or moral virtues—is blessed. This inner guiding principle serves as a source of inspiration and light, fostering creativity, profound ideas, and significant deeds. The quote highlights the transformative power of ideals in shaping one's purpose and impact on the world.
In practice
In a motivational speech about following one's dreams, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of inner ideals.
To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.
The universe is an asymmetrical entity. I am inclined to believe that life as it is manifested to us must be a function of the asymmetry of the universe or of the consequence of this fact. The universe is asymmetrical; for if one placed the entire set of bodies that compose the solar system, each moving in its own way, before a mirror, the image shown would not be superimposable on the reality.
These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite.
Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of invention. ... [Do not] share the opinion of those narrow minds who disdain everything in science which has not an immediate application. ... A theoretical discovery has but the merit of its existence: it awakens hope, and that is all. But let it be cultivated, let it grow, and you will see what it will become.
These three things-work, will, success-fill human existences. Will opens the door to success, both brilliant and happy. Work passes these doors, and at the end of the journey success comes in to crown one's efforts.
Chance favors those who are prepared.
Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean.
Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Let freedom ka-ching...Corporations do everything people do except breathe, die and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs in the Hudson River.
Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man.
The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.