What am I pondering, you ask? So help me God, immortality.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep contemplation on the concept of immortality and the significance it holds in human thought.
In this quote by John Milton, the speaker reveals that they are engaged in a profound thought about immortality, suggesting that the concept is of great importance to them. The invocation of divine help emphasizes the weightiness of the idea, as pondering immortality often leads to existential questions about life, purpose, and what lies beyond death.
In practice
During a lecture on philosophy, one might use this quote to initiate a discussion on the implications of immortality.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones.
Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss
The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.
Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind.
Every action has an ancestor of a thought.
Life is no way to treat an animal.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.
The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have to carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain sanity in an insane world.
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