Quotes about Essence

Most works are most beautiful without ornament.

It's the most essential thing of all just because it's not a matter of how you do it at all, but of whether you do it. Like being born, or cooking: how you do it is less important than whether you do it. You can find thousands of books on prayer that give you methods of praying, hundreds of hows; but they do you no good at all unless you actually pray. Otherwise it's like reading a cookbook instead of cooking. You can't eat a cookbook!

The root reason for this is the denial of the human essence, the human equality, the human family—judging people's worth only by how efficiently or intelligently or quickly they function. This is confusing the essence with the nonessential.

The root reason for this is the denial of the human essence, the human equality, the human family—judging people's worth only by how efficiently or intelligently or quickly they function. This is confusing the essence with the nonessential.

The ultimate reason we must become holy is that that is the only way to become real.

Truth is unchanging. The principles of morality are unchanging. The human essence is unchanging. Therefore there is no hope of a New Man, Heaven on Earth, Babel Rebuilt, a Brave New World, or Superman.

Heidegger says that "the fundamental question of metaphysics" is "why is there anything at all rather than nothing?" The fundamental question is not, as Plato thought, "what" a thing is (every Platonic dialogue is about that, about an essence, a definition, a concept, such as justice or piety or learning) but why it exists, why anything exists. Plato never asked that ultimate question. And the answer is God.

essential form

are more like Dog and Cat and Bird than like Lassie and Fido and Spot. Therefore

All that exists is metaphysically true and metaphysically good.

For we are not pure spirits who happen to be trapped in bodies. We are not even spirits who only have bodies, for we do not have bodies as we have possessions. We are bodies as well as souls.

There is more to a soul than what others see