Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.
Thomas HardyRead
The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
Interpretation
Religion aims to inspire a spiritual transformation within individuals rather than merely focusing on the afterlife.
This quote by Thomas Hardy emphasizes that the true purpose of religion extends beyond its traditional goal of securing a place in heaven after death. Instead, it suggests that the essence of religion lies in cultivating inner peace, moral integrity, and a sense of divinity within oneself, thus enriching one’s life and character in the present moment.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of personal spirituality over religious dogma.
Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.
Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.
But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.
I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else.
Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.
The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they? -that is, seem as if they had. And the river says,-'Why do ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand further away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!
Great steps in human progress are made by things that don't work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don't, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress.
It is only in our decisions that we are important.
The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human—at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.
Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.
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