About interest, memory and willpower

Only by working through the force of habit and custom in man can you give order to his will and therewith also to his memory. In other words, you must understand how everything that awakens an intense interest in the child also contributes to a very great extent towards making his memory strong and efficient. For the power of the memory must be derived from the feeling and will and not from mere intellectual memory exercises.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 293 – The Study of Man: Lecture VIII – Stuttgart, 29 August 1919

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True, profound knowledge is born out of suffering

Every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief. True, profound knowledge is never born out of joy. True, profound knowledge is born out of suffering.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 226 –  Man’s Being, His Destiny and World Evolution: Lecture 5 – Kristiania, 20th May 1923

Translated by Erna McArthur

The physical world is the expression of wisdom incarnate, divine wisdom

Think of the marvelous structure of the femur, of the bone which bears the whole body. Its construction is such that the maximum amount of strength is produced with the minimum amount of substance. No engineer could create such a wonder-structure. In comparison with the physical body, the astral body – the seat of passions and desires – is rudimentary and crude.

The physical world is the expression of wisdom incarnate, divine wisdom.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 94 – An Esoteric Cosmology Lecture IV: Involution and Evolution  – Paris, 28 May 1906

 Previously posted on 19 September 2013

Many people at the present time do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual

Do you not see the continually growing number of people at the present time who do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual? Do you not see how numerous are the people to whom the old forces of religion no longer give any inner stimulus? Whether they go to church or not is a matter of complete indifference to large numbers of human beings nowadays. The old religious impulses mean nothing to them. But neither will they bring themselves to give a thought to what can stream into our civilization as new spiritual life. They resist it, reject it, regard it as folly, as something inconvenient; they will not allow themselves to have anything to do with it. But, you see, human beings as we live on earth are veritably a unity. Our spiritual nature cannot be separated from our physical nature; both work together as a unity between birth and death. And even if human beings do not receive the spiritual through their faculties of soul, the spiritual takes effect, nevertheless. Since the last third of the nineteenth century the spiritual has been streaming around us; it is streaming into earthly evolution. The spiritual is there in very truth — only people are not willing to receive it.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 93 – The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: Lecture Three – Bern, 4th November 1919

Reality consists in contradictions

Reality consists in contradictions. We do not understand reality unless we see the contradictions in the world.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 293 – The Study of Man: Lecture VIII – Stuttgart, 29th August 1919