Maddy

“Inasmuch as existence originates from corruption, corruption from desire, desire from sensation, sensation from contact, I have ever avoided all action, all contact, and perpetually – motionless as the stela of a tomb, exhaling my breath from my two nostrils, fixing my eyes upon my nose, and contemplating the ether in my mind, the world in my members, the moon in my heart – I dreamed of the essence of the great Soul whence continually escape the principles of life, even as sparks escape from fire.
Thus at last I found the supreme Soul in all beings, and all beings in the supreme Soul; and I have been able to make enter in to it mine own soul in which I have enclosed all my senses.”
― Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of St. Antony