Tuesday, August 10, 2010

On having a pure and wise spirit

Artist: Orazio Gentileschi

Most people have a very natural and understandable desire to be understood and often suffer greatly when such understanding is not forthcoming. The following is quite consoling, actually:

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagorus was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

4 comments:

  1. You afre on a roll with Emerson. He is the source of lots of wonderful quotes.

    Marilyn

    ReplyDelete
  2. The multiple-personalitied and the schizophrenic and those without teeth and poor language skills also have difficulty being understood but they're just freaks.
    You're congratulating yourself.
    Seriously typical of "prophetic" religion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. methinks me detects one Mr. Robert Evans here, disguised as "anonymous"...we are onto you Mr. Evans...BEGONE!
    annie c
    p.s if you aren't him, my apologies

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ha! Yes, I thought so, too, Annie!

    ReplyDelete

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