Erik van Versendaal

“[T]he teacher . . . sows the word he himself has received from above (through his own masters and mentors) so exhaustively that its bounty emerges wholly from the student’s heart as if without any other cause.”

“As intermediary guide, the philosopher’s service of likening another to his own measure consists in giving himself in the inspired word whereby he gives heaven to the other and, within this, gives the other to heaven.”

“The embodied act of thinking together in the differentiated communion that is the dialogical exchange allows, then, for the complete exposition of what things are, and, in that sense, it is here that the truth belongs.”

“The surprise that parts bring with them qua non essential (or extra essential) accords with the kind of resource out of which they pour, for all actuality is perfect in sharing itself liberally, and so in ‘letting itself’ be enriched by the novelty of what it perfects by this self-sharing.”

“[T]he child is the proper finite consummation of the person’s enfleshed desire, and so the child is that created end for the sake of which man and woman do all that they do in the world.”

“In the very act of desiring union with her, the lover gives back to the beloved her own beauty and its inner promise, but with a difference—her own beauty is presented to her as a gift received by and a source of delight for another.”

“It is no embarrassment to respond.”

“Joy is only perfect, and truly vivifying for others, when it rises into oblation.”