Emma Cohen

When we are disappointed by a pleasure which we have been expecting and which comes, the disappointment is be. cause we were expecting the future. And as soon as it is there, it is the present. We want the future to be there with. out ceasing to be future. This is an absurdity of which eternity alone is the cure.

It is he who, through the operation of the dark night, withdraws himself in order not to be loved as the treasure is by the miser.

Never to think of a thing or being we love, but have not actually before our eyes, without reflecting that perhaps this thing has been destroyed, or this person is dead.

May our sense of reality not be dissolved by this thought but made more intense.

Each time that we say, "Thy will be done," we should have in mind all possible misfortunes added toge... See more

Human misery would be intolerable if it were not diluted in time. We have to prevent it from being diluted in order that it should be intolerable.

"And when they had had their fill of tears" (Iliad) -this is another way of making the worst suffering bearable.

We must not weep so that we may not be comforted.* All suffering which does not detach us is... See more

The world must be regarded as containing something of a void in order that it may have need of God. That presupposes evil.

To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death.