Thomas Traherne Quotes - Page 2

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness.

Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed. Therefore tho others count me miserable, I will not believe them if I know and feel myself to be happy; nor fear them.

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

The sense itself was I. I felt no dross or matter in my soul, no brims or borders, such as in a bowl we see. My essence was capacity.

Principles are like a seed in the ground; they must continually be visited with heavenly influences or else your life will be a barren field.

To think well is to serve God in the interior court.

It is of the nobility of man's soul that he is insatiable: for he hath a benefactor so prone to give, that he delighteth in us for asking. Do not your inclinations tell you that the WORLD is yours? Do you not covet all? Do you not long to have it; to enjoy it; to overcome it? To what end do men gather riches, but to multiply more? Do they not like Pyrrhus the King of Epire, add house to house and lands to lands, that they may get it all?

Natural things are glorious, and to know them is glorious.

Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?

He knoweth nothing as he ought to know it, who thinketh he knoweth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels, and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.

To walk abroad is, not with eyes, But thoughts, the fields to see and prize; Else may the silent feet, Like logs of wood, Move up and down, and see no good, Nor Jor nor glory meet.

Let those parents that desire Holy Children learn to make them possessors of Heaven and Earth betimes; to remove silly objects from before them, to magnify nothing but what is great indeed, and to talk of God to them, and of His works and ways. before they can either speak or go.

You are as prone to love as the sun is to shine; it being the most delightful and natural employment of the soul of humans.

You never know yourself till you know more than your body.

By this you may see who are the rude and barbarous Indians: For verily there is no savage nation under the cope of Heaven, that is more absurdly barbarous than the Christian World. They that go naked and drink water and live upon roots are like Adam, or Angels in comparison of us.

We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us.

An empty book is like an Infant's soul, in which anything may be written.

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

Why is this soe long detaind in a dark manuscript, that if printed would be a Light to the World, & a Universal Blessing?

How like an angel came I down!