Quotes about Essence

No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.

The hand or foot, when separated from the body, retains indeed its name, but totally changes its nature, because it is completely divested of its uses and of its powers.

If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

This is a very imperfect analogy, because the nature of a thing is not a core but a principle.

Being is the soul of every concept, of every judgment and of every reasoning.

To be devoid of love is the essence of hell.

All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.

A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.

Power is the essence of the Christian witness.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

Though we are not Almighty God Himself, nevertheless, we are now divine.

The salvation of life lies in seeing each object in its essence and its entirety, discerning both the material and the causal: in applying one's whole soul to doing right and speaking the truth. There remains only the enjoyment of living a linked succession of good deeds, with not the slightest gap between them. p121