A Quote by Annie Dillard
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
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For thirty years I sought God. But when I looked carefully I found that in reality God was the seeker and I the sought.
I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.
Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion.
Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.
The seeker is that which is being sought.
Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is not pleasure. The purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love - which is the definition of God. In pursuing that goal we find happiness. Pleasure is not the purpose of anything; pleasure is a by-product resulting from doing something that is good. One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves, 'How can I please God?' and, 'Why am I not better?' It is the pleasure-seeker who is bored, for all pleasures diminish with repetition.
When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I feel how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.
The seeker is never so popular as the sought. People want what they can't get.
Even among the married, sexual satisfaction must not be sought in a way which disregards man's character as a person and degrades him to the animal level.
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;
Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.
When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
Pleasure is just a shadow of joy. When there is no joy in you, you become a pleasure seeker.
Nowadays men cannot love seven night but they must have all their desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded and hasty, heat soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so.
The decision to give an indicative date for a return is a mistake. It degrades the process. It degrades human life.
Sufism is not a religion or a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it a moral, nor a special kind of mysticism, being free from the usual religious sectarianism. If ever it could be called a religion, it would only be as a religion of love, harmony, and beauty.
The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world.
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