It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the body serves as a tool for the mind, which is responsible for its actions and experiences.
George Santayana highlights the relationship between the body and the mind, portraying the body as an instrument that the mind uses to navigate and experience the world. The mind governs the functions and actions of the body, while the experiences and outcomes of these actions serve as a witness to the mind's operations, ultimately making the mind aware of its own existence and achievements.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the power of the human experience.
It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
Trials should not surprise us, or cause us to doubt God's faithfulness. Rather, we should actually be glad for them. God sends trials to strengthen our trust in him so that our faith will not fail. Our trials keep us trusting; they burn away our self confidence and drive us to our Savior.
Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth. _x000D_ It is thy desire in us that desireth. _x000D_ It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also. _x000D_ We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us: _x000D_ Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all.
I believe that very much of current Arminianism is simply ignorance of gospel doctrine; and if people began to study their Bibles, and to take the Word of God as they find it, they must inevitably, if believers, rise up to rejoice in the doctrines of grace.
What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!" "And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!
I urge you to read Eternal Treblinka and think deeply about its important message.
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