There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.
That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being. . . is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness. " It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.
To-day the whole Christian world prostrates itself in adoration around the crib of Bethlehem and rehearses in accents of love a history which precedes all time and will endure throughout eternity. As if by an instinct of our higher, spiritual nature, there well up from the depths of our hearts, emotions which challenge the power of human expression. We seem to be lifted out of the sphere of natural endeavor to put on a new life and to stretch forward in desire to a blessedness which, though not palpable, is eminently real.
Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God.
It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over over any soul be loved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return.
Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out the passing day and put away to think of afterwards.
Blessedness is within us all.
Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
Our assurance, our glory, and the sole anchor of our salvation are that Christ the Son of God is ours, and we in turn are in him sons of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, called to the hope of eternal blessedness by God's grace, not by our worth.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
Sorrow is only one of the lower notes in the oratorio of our blessedness.
The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.
There is a blessedness surely to be believed, and that is that everything abides in eternal ecstasy, now and forever.
The purpose of the whole (work) is to remove those who are living in this life from a state of wretchedness and lead them to the state of blessedness.
If human love hath power to penetrate the veil--and hath it not?--then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them.
We ourselves can die with comfort and even with joy if we know that death is but a passport to blessedness, that this intellect, freed from all material chains, shall rise and shine.
I am blessed beyond the realms of blessedness, and easily the greatest pleasure is giving it away
High above all earthly lower happiness, the blessedness of the eight Beatitudes towers into the heaven itself. They are white with the snows of eternity; they give a space, a meaning, a dignity to all the rest of the earth over which they brood.
For she belike hath drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep.
