Just as painters in working from models constantly gaze at their exemp — Saints

"A saint, whether Buddhist or Christian, who knows his business as a saint is rightly meditative and in proportion to the rightness of his meditation is the depth of his peace. We have it on an authority which Mr. Chesterton is bound to respect that the kingdom of heaven is within us. … Failing like many others to discriminate between romanticism and religion, Mr. Chesterton has managed to misrepresent both Buddhism and Christianity. The truth is, that though Christianity from the start was more emotional in its temper than Buddhism, and though an element of nostalgia entered into it from an early period, it is at one in its final emphasis with the older religion. In both faiths the emphasis is on the peace that passeth understanding."

"People find it difficult to understand why one must travel to the master in order to hear the teaching from his lips (...). There is a great difference between hearing the truth from the master directly, and hearing it quoted by others (...) and reading it in a book."

"We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?"

"The spiritual influence that a person of higher stature exerts on the environment, which comes about through the constant encounter, purifies the environment. It lends the graces of holiness and freedom on all who come in contact with him. And this nobility of a holy grace returns after a while with stronger force and acts on the person himself who exerted the influence and he becomes sociable, abounding in spirituality and holiness. This is a higher attribute than the holiness in a state of withdrawal."

"No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saints body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things."

"Both saints and lords were patrons in the sense of serving as the pater, the father, to those beneath them Indeed, our modern linguistic distinction between a "patron" and a "patron saint" is largely a product of the eighteenth century; before that time, the single word "patron" normally designated both categories."