Transcendance Quotes

“The sea is only the embodiment of a
supernatural and wonderful existence.
It is nothing but love and emotion;
it is the ‘Living Infinite...”
― Jules Verne

“A real secret is something which only one person knows.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“Stepping out of one’s world or out of one’s habitual self is a transcendental experience. [...] If we seek transcendence, we may have many visions, but we will surely end where we started. If we opt for growth, we may have our moments of transcendence, but they will be peak experiences along the steady road to a richer and more secure self. (32-33)”
― Alexander Lowen

“Suddenly, he felt a tremendous stirring of hope inside his heart; it filled his whole body with its warmth. I may not be that much of a broken man, he thought to himself.”
― H. L. Balcomb

“Poetry is the way that we transcend language through language. And thus our freedom lies in the poetry of all things”
― Ilyas Kassam

“We have within ourselves as a species, to find the beauty in everything. And once we master it, we will then be some of the gentlest creatures that ever evolved.”
― Tom Althouse, The Frowny Face Cow

“The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could mean.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and he laughed till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and went and lay down to sleep beside his companions.”
― Lev Tolstoi, War and Peace

“Every essay, every academic talk, every writing effort can be deepened through observation and detail, can be made evocative, can contain interstellar dust, luminous patches and areas of darkness. There's transcendence to be found in these connections - in the nebulous and nebulae, ducks and darkness - if we have the patience to wait for them.”
― Jo Ann Beard, Festival Days