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

“We obtain merit only by our thirst for truth.”
― Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of St. Antony

“Shake the vermin from thy rags! Rise up from thy filth! Thy god is not a moloch who demands human flesh in sacrifice!”
― Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of St. Antony

“He remembers with disdain the ignorance of other days, the mediocrity of his dreams. And now those luminous globes he was wont to gaze upon from below are close to him!”
― Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of St. Antony