People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.
Man's Unhappiness. . . comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. . . Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarreling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: It is. . . the Shadow of Ourselves.
No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.
Time is our most finite commodity, therefore our most valuable, and I respect other peoples' time.
If you want to reach the infinite, then explore every aspect of the finite.
What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by "living"? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives.
Fiction stymies me with its possibility. I can't see the bottom and I freeze, cling to the side, or just choke. In nonfiction, particularly that which takes personal narrative for its primary topic, I have a finite space and a finite amount of material. I can't fabricate material, I can only shape and burrow into it.
I feel awed by the mystery of being both so finite and yet so infinite, so much and so little, so conscious and yet, so coincidental.
Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.
Every life is finite, Will.
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.
There are three reasons,. . . apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first. . . is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second. . . to escape material impoverishment: the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forego forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third. . . our spiritual need for an open frontier.
There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably well or as long as our problems seem clear and finite and manageable.
The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.
If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.
All the analysis of infinite reality which the finite human mind can conduct rests on the tacit assumption that only a finite portion of this reality constitutes the object of scientific investigation, and that only it is 'important' in the sense of being 'worthy of being known.
When politicians & economists understand we live in a finite world & act accordingly then a better future has a chance
Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.
