A Quote by Martin Farquhar Tupper

Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; a sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

Quote Topics

Activity Air Discern Fire Hidden Invention Mind Motion Sharpening Sight Spiritual

Quote Author

Martin Farquhar Tupper
English - Writer
July 17, 1810 - 1889

It is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; they can breed thoughts.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Luck, good or bad, is the invisible play of mind upon affairs, the effect of mental aptitudes and habits which are not in sight, but which work and bring forth their due issues.

James Vila Blake

Prayer is spiritual breathing; when we pray we breathe in the Holy Spirit; praying in the Holy Spirit (Jd. 1:20). Thus, all church prayers are the breathing of the Holy Spirit; as it were spiritual air and also light, spiritual fire, spiritual food and spiritual raiment.

John of Kronstadt

Very little strength can produce much motion of air. Learn about air as motion.

Arnold Jacobs

The purpose of ritual is to change the mind of the human being. It's a sacred drama in which you are the audience as well as the participant, and the purpose of it is to activate the parts of the mind that are not activated by everyday activity ... 'Magic' becomes the development of techniques that allow communication with hidden portions of the self, and with hidden portions of all other islands in this 'psychic sea.'

Margot Adler

...those experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give more light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner's needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion.

Francis Bacon

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organ of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing by ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.

Thomas Huxley

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed, The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear, The upward glancing of an eye When none but God is near.

James Montgomery

The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.

Jack Kerouac

You own a watch the invention of the mind, though for a single motion 'tis designed, as well as that which is with greater thought with various springs, for various motions wrought.

Richard Blackmore

Hearing, which, by the motion of the air, informs us of the motion of sounding or vibrating bodies.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

We realise that natural aptitudes are not interchangeable, and each person must, of biological or spiritual necessity, practise the art for which he is fitted.

George William Russell

God designed that the living machinery should be in daily activity. For in this activity or motion is its preserving power.... The more we exercise, the better will be the circulation of the blood.

Ellen G. White

Nature has unlimited time in which to travel along tortuous paths to an unknown destination. The mind of man is too feeble to discern whence or whither the path runs and has to be content if it can discern only portions of the track, however small.