Cultivation
A man had a plot of land
that had become a wilderness of thistles and
thorns. He decided to cultivate it and said to his
son: "Go and clear the land." But when the son
went to clear it, he saw that the thistles and
thorns had multiplied. He thought, "How much
time shall I need to clear and weed all this?" and
lay on the ground instead, and went to sleep. He
did this day after day. When his father found
him doing nothing, the son explained his
discouragement. The father replied, "Son, if you
had cleared each day the area on which you lay
down, your work would have advanced slowly
and you would not have lost heart." The son did
what his father said, and in a short time the plot
was cultivated.
- Saying of the Desert Fathers
Each of us is called to
cultivate an inner garden in which the Divine
Word may grow and flourish.
- St John of the Cross
That is true cultivation
which gives us sympathy with every form of
human life, and enables us to work most
successfully for its advancement. Refinement
that carries us away from our fellowmen is not
God's refinement.
- Henry Ward Beecher
As the soil, however rich
it may be, cannot be productive without culture,
so the mind, without cultivation, can never
produce good fruit.
- Seneca
Whatever expands the
affections, or enlarges the sphere of our
sympathies—whatever makes us feel our
relation to the universe and all that it inherits in
time and in eternity, and to the great and
beneficent cause of all, must unquestionably
refine our nature, and elevate us in the scale of
being.
- William Ellery Channing
Insist on yourself; never
imitate. Your own gift you can present every
moment with the cumulative force of a whole
life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of
another you have only an extemporaneous half
possession.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be sure, this requires
effort and love, a careful cultivation of the
spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active
oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards
things and people. It is not to be learned by
world-flight, running away from things, turning
solitary and going apart from the world. Rather,
one must learn an inner solitude, where or with
whomsoever he may be. He must learn to
penetrate things and find God there, to get a
strong impression of God firmly fixed on his
mind.
- Menander of Athens
Cultivate only the habits
that you are willing should master you.
- Elbert Hubbard