Infinite Ignorance

collection 

This is a collection of quotes from a few different people on the topic sometimes referred to as 'infinite ignorance'.


References


Let us be convinced that nothing can happen to us apart from the providence of God.
- St. Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings

Discourses and Sayings Faith, Providence None None
Our only occupation should be the cure of ourselves; Empty is the discourse of that philosopher by which no human passion is attended to
- Epicurus, Kyriai Doxai (The Principal Doctrines)

Kyriai Doxai (The Principal Doctrines) Philosophy Epicureanism Epicureanism
Obedience is the burial of the will and the resurrection of humility.
- St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

The Ladder of Divine Ascent Obedience, Humility None None
Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss, and embrace the universe; and then compare what we call human life with infinity...
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

Letters from a Stoic Stoicism The Universal Perspective The Universal Perspective
Do not fight to expel the darkness from the chamber of your soul...Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear.
- St. Porphyrios, None

None None None None
The Lord does not show Himself to a proud soul. The proud soul, no matter how many books it reads, will never know God, since by its pride it does not give place for the grace of the Holy Spirit, while God is known only by the humble soul.
- St. Silouan the Athonite, Wisdom from Mount Athos

Wisdom from Mount Athos Pride, Books None None
Man had been created to rise, in his simple and uncompounded nature, in noetic contemplation of the simple and uncompounded God, To rise in love, and to unite all of creation with himself in love, raising it also to the Creator. Instead of regarding the Way, however, he chose to regard what was easier and closer at hand: his own visible self. Instead of rising with God, he fell in love with himself.
- Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Christ the Eternal Tao

Christ the Eternal Tao The Primordial Departure Nonfiction Nonfiction
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Walden Perception transcendentalist, universal beauty, Nature, Poetry transcendentalist, universal beauty, Nature, Poetry
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing
- Socrates, Plato's Dialogues

Plato's Dialogues wisdom and ignorance Ancient Greek Philosophy Ancient Greek Philosophy
Instead of speaking of it, I make it understood by my acts
- Socrates, unknown

unknown The definition of justice None None
It must come to me, not I to it
- Plotinus, The Enneads

The Enneads spirituality Ancient Greek Philosophy, Neoplatonism, Non-doing Ancient Greek Philosophy, Neoplatonism, Non-doing
The purification of the soul, its separation as far as possible from the body and its gathering itself together within itself, is the true practice of philosophy. Hence philosophy consists of a lived concrete exercise and not of a theory or conceptual edifice: The theoretical philosophical discourse is completely different from the lived exercises by which the soul purifies itself of its passions and spiritually separates itself from the body
- Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Philosophy as a Way of Life Philosophy Philosophy Philosophy
Watch and see the courses of the stars as if you are running alongside them, and continually dwell in your mind upon the changes of the elements into one another; for these imaginations wash away the foulness of life on the earth. When you are reasoning about mankind, look upon earthly things below as if from some vantage point above them.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Meditations Stoicism The View from Above, The Universal Perspective The View from Above, The Universal Perspective
I thought of Plato's words and felt them suddenly in my heart: all in all, nothing human is worth taking very seriously; nevertheless.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Human, All Too Human The Universal Perspective None None
Blessed is the one who has arrived at infinite ignorance.
- Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos

Praktikos Infinite Ignorance None None
We can perhaps get a better idea [of this spiritual exercise] if we understand it as an attempt to liberate ourselves from a partial, passionate point of view - linked to the senses and the body - so as to rise to the universal, normative viewpoint of thought, submitting ourselves to the demands of the Logos and the norm of the Good. Training for death is training to die to one's *individuality and passions*, in order to look at things from the perspective of universality and objectivity.
- Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

Philosophy as a Way of Life Spiritual Exercises The Ego The Ego
You were already the All, but because something else besides the All came to be added on to you, you have become less than the All, by the very fact of this addition. For the adition did not come about from being - what could be added to the All? - but rather from not-being. When one becomes "someone" out of not-being, one is no longer the All, until one leaves the not-being behind...Moreover, you increase yourself when you reject everything other than the All, and when you have rejected it, the All will be present to you...The All had no need to *come* in order to be present. If it is *not* present, the reason is that it is *you* who have distanced yourself from it. "Distancing yourself" does not mean leaving it to go someplace else - for it would be there, too. Rather it means turning away from the All, despite the fact that it is there.
- Plotinus, The Enneads

The Enneads Neoplatonism The All, The Ego The All, The Ego