Edwin Abbott Abbott

“ It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of the Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; when the Land of Three Dimensions seems almost as visionary as the Land of One or None; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very tablets on which I am writing, and all the substantial realities of Flatland itself, appear no better than the offspring of a diseased imagination, or the baseless fabric of a dream. ”

“ But when Jesus heard the words of Peter, he turned and looked upon all the disciples and upon Peter, and he rejoiced with an exceeding joy, as if in that utterance of faith the first seed had been sown which was to grow up into the Tree of Life; or as if he had seen before his very eyes the laying of the foundations of a great temple, not like unto the marble temple of Augustus built upon the visible rock, but a temple of human souls compacted together by no hands of man, but by the Spirit of God, and destructible by no power in earth or hell. ”

“ How they will war against one another for their Prince of Peace! How they will philosophize and hair-split about the Father and the Son, tearing one another in pieces for the unity of the one God! And yet, and yet, even if all my prophecies of the worst come to pass, might not a Christian philosopher of those far-off days say that the ‘worst is often the corruption of the best,’ and that his Prophet had discovered a ‘best,’ buried for a time beneath all this rubbish and litter, but destined to emerge and grow into the tree of a great spiritual empire? ”

“ ONESIMUS TO ARTEMIDORUS, HEALTH.
“O for an hour of Antioch or Colossæ! Never before had I understood how much of the joy of life we owe to the Muses till I came hither, where the Muses are despised. Here are no temples (save one) , no processions, no dances, no games, no chariot races, no plays, no pictures, no statues, no libraries; the very air breathes dullness and superstition. If one brings a statue into these streets it is sacrilege; and they shrink from our poems and songs, our literature and our very language, as if it were a sin to be a Greek. ”

“ If you will not worship God in the man Jesus, you will hardly worship Him in Socrates, or Paul, or any other specimen of humanity. Will you then turn to inanimate nature, and worship him in that? Then you will be turning from the higher to the lower conception of God. Before I knew Christ, I might perhaps have worshipped God the Maker, being led to him, so to speak, by the world as Mediator. Inspired by awe for the Creator of so vast and orderly a machine, I might have adored Him as the artificer of the stars and this terrestrial globe. ”

“ For verily Jesus was fit to be the Redeemer of Israel; but the generation was unfit. He was as the morning star in his joy, and as the sun in the glory of his brightness; but the night cometh apace, and the sun must give place to the darkness. Verily, Jesus was of them that have entered into Paradise, and have tasted of the honey of the highest heaven. But perchance he hath seen things not vouchsafed to men to see, even the mystery of the Chariot; and the vision hath been too much for the eye of man, and with much honey the mind hath been demented. ”

“ If even the angle of a respectable Triangle in the middle class is not without its dangers; if to run against a Working Man involves a gash; if collision with an officer of the military class necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from the vertex of a Private Soldier brings with it danger of death;—what can it be to run against a Woman, except absolute and immediate destruction? And when a Woman is invisible, or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point, how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious, always to avoid collision! ”

“ In Nature there is evil as well as good. I cannot therefore worship the Author of all Nature, but must worship the Author of Nature-minus-the evil. Where is He to be found? He is revealed in what we recognize to be good, true, and beautiful. Now no one man can include in his life all that we mean by scientific truth, and artistic beauty, as well as moral goodness. But, truth being a harmony, there is no deeper and nobler truth than the harmony of a human will with the will of the Supreme; and, beneath perishable artistic beauty, there is an eternal beauty to be discerned in righteousness. ”

“ What brings you here at this hour, most serious Cynic? A truant humour, I fear. For it is lecture time, or at all events not much past: and Epictetus gives long lessons. Yet no. You are no truant. Truants don’t look so serious. You have come here as a philosopher, to see life as it is, and to set up as a heretic. You come from books to things; from ideals to facts. Good! Now begin to learn! Look at these bipeds! Look, and listen! Up above, in your schoolroom, they were ‘sons of God,’ were they not! Look, then, at that son of God hitting his brother son of God in the eye! ”

“ There is no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyriphlegethon; but all is full of gods and divine beings. He who can think of the whole universe as his home, and can look upon the sun, moon and stars as his friends, and enjoy the companionship of the earth and sea, he is no more solitary nor helpless exile. Let death come to you when he will. Can death banish you from the universe? You know he cannot. Go where you may, there will be still a sun, moon, and stars, dreams and auguries and communications with the Gods. ”

“ All men have within themselves some portion of the Spirit of God; even as we now have some portion of that great wind and breath of heaven which here in Jotapata is rustling in the olive-branches, and yonder at Capernaum is driving the fishing-boats, and out in the Great Sea is speeding the ships of Tarshish on their path. Now if thou closest thy mouth and thy nostrils against the winds of heaven and sayest, ‘The air is as poison to me, I will not breathe it,’ behold, thou perishest. ”

“ Then was I silent: for I understood now that his meaning was, that the teaching of Jesus would in the end bring to pass the enfranchising of all slaves, and I knew not what to reply.
But he, still smiling, said, "I perceive that thou understandest my meaning. For the teaching of thy Master aimeth at nothing less than the destroying of all manner of slavery. But without slavery the race of man neither hath existed, nor can exist, as thou knowest very well. For without slaves no work could be performed except the tilling of the land, which alone is fit for free men." ”