Thomas Traherne Quotes
This moment exhibits infinite space, but there is a space also wherein all moments are infinitely exhibited, and the everlasting duration of infinite space is another region and room of joys.
You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.
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.
I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory: but by the gentle ways of peace and love.
Sure Man was born to meditate on things, And to contemplate the eternal springs Of God and Nature, glory, bliss and pleasure: That life and love might be his eternal treasure.
The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God.
To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious.
A little grit in the eye destroyeth the sight of the very heavens, and a little malice or envy a world of joys. One wry principle in the mind is of infinite consequence.
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.
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 corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.
As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.
We do not ignore maturity. Maturity consists in not losing the past while fully living in the present with a prudent awareness of the possibilities of the future.
This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of God's righteous Kingdom.
Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.
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.
Had we not loved ourselves at all, we could never have been obliged to love anything. So that self-love is the basis of all love.
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.
Why is this soe long detaind in a dark manuscript, that if printed would be a Light to the World, & a Universal Blessing?
Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.
Sleep is cousin-german unto death: Sleep and death differ, no more, than a carcass And a skeleton.
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.
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.
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?
