A Quote by Jonathan Schell

Reason must sit at the knee of instinct and learn reverence for the miraculous instinctual capacity for creation.

Jonathan Schell

Quote Topics

Capacity Creation Instinct Knee Learn Miraculous Must Reason Reverence Sit

Quote Author

Jonathan Schell
American - Author
August 21, 1943 - March 25, 2014

We must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

Wendell Berry

Maternal instinct, merely as an instinct, is unworthy of our superstitious reverence.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended.

Mark Rothko

You do not lose your value or preciousness when you grow to be a adult. You are still that miraculous creation. You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

Pablo Casals

The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it and for it.

Thomas Carlyle

Children, who have yet to learn our ways, are notoriously promiscuous in their affection. They’ll sit on anyone’s knee.

Hanif Kureishi

One antidote for sexual truancy lies in simply teaching youth the wonder, the miracle, the reverence for the creation of life itself. Life is a divine creation. You don't take chances with creation.

Sam Levenson

After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied

Cyril Connolly

Acting is really instinctual and I think you can overanalyse what you're doing. A lot of it has to be based on instinct.

Daniel Radcliffe

Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Generosity is revolutionary, counter-instinctual. Our survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But we can transform our relationship to that survival instinct by constantly asking ourselves, ‘How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?

Noah Levine

One who loves must learn fear. One who fears must learn love. The thinker must do. The doer must think. The pacifist must fight, the fighter must find peace. If you flow as a river, burn as a fire. If you burn as a furnace, flow as a river. If you fly as a bird, sit firm as a rock. If you sit firmly, then fly as a bird. Be a fire that flows. A rock that flies. Love with fear and fear with love. For we are not fire, not water, not air, not rocks, not thoughts, not deeds, not fear, not love. We are G-dly beings.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson

There's no more important bonding thing than a mother doing the daughter's hair. We sit at our mother's knee and learn who we are.

T'Keyah Crystal Keymah

Reverence is an attitude of honoring life. Reverence automatically brings forth patience. Reverence permits non-judgemental justice. Reverence is a perception of the soul.