| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
| |
| |
| NUMBER: | 58614 |
| QUOTATION: | Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, practical, and, in a large sense, radical. So many years and ages of the gods those Eastern sages sat contemplating Brahm, uttering in silence the mystic “Om,” being absorbed into the essence of the Supreme Being, never going out of themselves, but subsiding farther and deeper within; so infinitely wise, yet infinitely stagnant; until, at last, in that same Asia, but in the western part of it, appeared a youth, wholly unforetold by them,—not being absorbed into Brahm, but bringing Brahm down to earth and to mankind; in whom Brahm had awakened from his long sleep, and exerted himself, and the day began,—a new avatar. The Brahman had never thought to be a brother of mankind as well as a child of God. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 1, pp. 141-142, Houghton Mifflin (1906). |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
| |
| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
|
|
