Music is a clue of the impossible, its translation into the possible.

- Ernst Jünger

It is evident how necessarily our Self is rooted and grounded in Him who created it, so that the knowledge of our Self does not lie within our own power, but that in order to measure the extent of the same, we must press forward into the very heart of God Himself, who alone can determine and resolve the whole mystery of our nature.

- Johann Georg Hamann

You are now souls, nothing but souls, all alone, disburdened by their bodies left to the devourers of the earth, vagabonds, if you will, in the immense day or night, but clairvoyants beyond what might be imagined.

- Léon Bloy

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

- C.S. Lewis

The Lord blesses the poor, those who hunger and weep, and the persecuted, under the condition that it is all for the sake of the Son of man. This means that He blesses a life which is surrounded by every kind of need and deprivation. According to this saying, pleasures, ease, and esteem are not something good - and indeed, this is the way it is. But while a person finds rest in these things, he does not realise this. Only when he frees himself from their spell does he see that they are not good things of themselves, but only phantoms. A soul cannot do without consolations, but these should not be of the senses. It cannot do without treasures, but these should not of gold and silver, not in luxurious houses and clothes, and not in outward plenitude. It cannot get by without honor, but this lies not in people's servile bows. There are other consolations, other kinds of pleasure, and other kinds of honour, but these are spiritual, akin to the soul. He who finds them does not want the outward ones. Not only does he not want them, but he scorns and hates them, because they obstruct the spiritual and do not allow one to see it. They keep a soul in darkness, drunkenness, and phantoms. This is why such people with all their soul prefer poverty, sorrow, and obscurity, and they feel good amidst them, as though behind some safe enclosure against the spell of the deceptions of the world. What about those people who have all these [treasures of the world] without trying? They should relate to all of these things, according to the word of the Holy Apostle, as one who possesses not (I Corinthians 7:30).

• Saint Theophan the Recluse

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.

• Saint Gregory of Nyssa

The machine and technique are the product of the mental development and discoveries of culture; but they sap its organic foundations and kill its spirit. Culture, having lost its soul, becomes civilization. Spiritual matters are discounted; quantity displaces quality. The assertion of the will to 'life', power, organization and earthly happiness, brings about mankind's spiritual decline; for the higher spiritual life is based upon asceticism and resignation. Such are the tragedy and fate of historical destinies. Knowledge and science become the instrument of realizing the will to power, earthly happiness and the triumph of technique whose sole aim is the enjoyment of life in its immediate manifestations. Art, too, becomes an instrument of technique and a decorative element in the organization of life. The whole beauty of culture associated with its temples and palaces now becomes a lifeless museum exhibit. The museum is the only tie civilization has with the past. There springs up a cult of life which has no regard for any deeper purpose behind it. Nothing has an authentic value any longer. No moment or experience of life is sufficiently profound to permit of communion with eternity. Every instant and experience is but the means for speeding up the life processes aspiring towards a false eternity and the all-devouring vampire of the future, the promise of power and happiness. The ever-quickening tempo of civilization destroys all notion of either past, present or eternity.

- Nikolai Beryaev

It is clear, today, to every true Christian, clearer than sunlight, that man cannot find the ultimate goals of his life on Earth or anywhere in the material universe. Our goal is beyond the entire material world, in the kingdom of substance and spiritual reality, in the Kingdom of God, and not in those realms of the symbols and signs pointing to that Kingdom.

• Saint Nikolai (Velimirovic)

To understand the destiny of culture it is necessary to per- ceive its dynamic principles and fatal dialectic. Culture is the living process and destiny of peoples. But it becomes evident that it cannot maintain itself at the high peak of its efflorescence. Every type of culture known to history demonstrates its liability to disintegrate and be transformed into another state to which the term 'culture' is no longer applicable. And that is due to the fact that it develops a will to new "life", to power and dominion at all costs. The will to power at all costs is the principle of civilization. The latter is always interested, whereas culture is disinterested in its highest achievements. Thus culture ends and civilization begins when the 'enlightened' reason sweeps away all spiritual obstacles in the way of the profits and enjoyments to be had from "life" and when the will to power and organized dominion of life are strongest.

- Nikolai Berdyaev

The path of freedom is difficult and tragic, more beset than any other with heroic responsibility and martyrdom. The paths of necessity and compulsion are easier, less tragic and less heroic. That is why the historical process shows so many derogations from the path of freedom to that of compulsion. This is true of the religious as well as of the secular experi- ence. The temptation is superbly expounded by Dostoievsky in his Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. The Grand Inquisitor wishes to relieve men of the burden of freedom, so that they may all be happy. Mankind yielded to this temptation in the Inquisition and does so again in our own time in the religion of Communism, which is simply the doctrine of the Grand Inquisitor based on the fall from the path of freedom to that of compulsion, so that mankind may be delivered from the burden of its tragic destiny. This is the very essence of the historical drama, rooted in the conflict between the prin- ciples of freedom and compulsion, in the ceaseless supersession of the one by the other.

- Nikolai Berdyaev