Quotes about Essence

The flesh is not a nature that is essential to someone's identity. It is rather a deceptive way of seeing and experiencing oneself and one's world and thus a deceptive way of living in the world.

Any created thing must, for example, possess a limited set of characteristics which rules out the possibility of it possessing other characteristics incompatible with these.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

Life minus love equals zero.

God is not one more intelligible object among many, not a supreme existing thing among other existing things, not simply the highest value alongside other ethical goods. Rather, God is that which is intelligible in itself, that which exists through the power of its own essence, that which is good by its very nature.

Surely the flowers of a hundred spring are simply the souls of beautiful things!

Surely the flowers of a hundred springs are simply the souls of beautiful things!

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

I think that the essence of a free and civilized society is that everything in it should be subject to criticism, that all forms of authority, should be treated with a certain reservation.

To us, recollection is a holy act; we sanctify the present by remembering the past. To us Jews, the essence of faith is memory. To believe is to remember.

The plea is not to obey what He wills but to do what He is.

The body without the spirit is a corpse; the spirit without the body is a ghost.