I tell you: even though, like the Sage of sages, you carried in your memory the image of all the beings that people the earth or swim in the seas, still all that knowledge would be as nothing for your soul, for all abstract knowledge is only a faded reality: this is because to understand the world knowledge is not enough, you must see it, touch it, live in its presence and drink the vital heat of existence in the very heart of reality. (religion-online.org)
Only those who stand beneath the cross and watch him suffer and die will be convinced that at the heart of reality is One who enters into suffering. (religion-online.org)
This apparent contradiction certainly names a tension, a problem that lies at the heart of our humanity, and therefore (I would say), at the heart of reality itself, at least as far as we humans can know. (firstthings.com)