Soren

“It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“The same mis-location of the body explains many other intractable problems now facing much of our world: the sexualization of practically everything, abortion, eating disorders, and racial and other discriminations. All of these are rooted in taking the body-our own or that of others-to be the person and thereby depriving ourselves of the spiritual perspective on the person, which alone can enable us to cherish the body and its central role in our life.
Body hatred also comes from disappointment about our future with it, even from outright fear of the body-of what it is going to do to us. Not accepting God as God puts us in his place, I have noted, and leaves us with nothing to trust and worship but our body and its natural powers. The frenzy over physical attractiveness that we see all around us today and the despair over its loss-eventually, in aging and death, for everyone-are the main characteristics of the contemporary climate of life.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“In one of C. S. Lewis's more striking passages, he challenges us
to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you
would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
― Robert Heinlein