a "Church" of conscience?

"'But this is just as true today,' the elder [Zosima] suddenly spoke out, and they all immediately turned to him. 'If Christ's Church did not exist today, there would be nothing to restrain man from committing crimes, for there would be no real punishment...I'm not talking of 'mechanical' punishment, such as was described a moment ago, which in most cases only hardens a criminal, but of real punishment, the only effective one, that people fear and that can bring peace -- the awareness of one's own conscience.'"

-- Book II, Chapter 5, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Andrew H. MacAndrew).

Non-Ficthean

"When Fichte spoke of the Ego as the formative principle, the Romantic poets took this to mean that the world is a subjective creation, that is, the product of the individual subjectivity. But Fichte did not intend such a point: his concept of 'Ego' does not pertain to the individual, empirical subject but rather to the subject-principle in general, of which the individual subject is but a limited mode. (If there is any sense in which one could think of 'individuality' here, it would be the individuality of God.)"

-- German Romantics in Context, Roger Cardinal, 1975, p. 59.

"The ultimate object of yearning..."

"The ultimate object of yearning is not necessarily at a distance in time and space: distance may be an illusion of the person who yearns. The Romantic suggestion is that longing is not quenched through external effort but through internal maturation. The Romantic initiate learns that, as Tieck once remarked,'Utopia often lies right at our feet'."

-- German Romantics in Context, Roger Cardinal, 1975, p. 33.

filioque in the 19th century

"76. The issue of unity and separation -- so emotionally, as well as intellectually, central to romanticism -- is marvelously presented in Khomiakov's fictitious account of an Orthodox traveler in Western lands who, when he hears the addition of filioque to the creed in the liturgy, discovers that the West has split from Christendom. (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Moscow, 1990-1914], vol. 2, pp. 48-49.) It is interesting that both Coleridge and Friedrich Schlegel considered filioque an important issue and championed the Western position against the Orthodox."

-- The Emergence of Romanticism, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, 1992, p. 95, note 76.

parts of Romantic wholes

"Following the collapse of early romanticism, such elements of its vision as nature, love, beauty, music, art, and artistic creativity developed more independently, separately, or in combination with other elements, inspiring their own theories and cults..."

-- The Emergence of Romanticism, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, 1992, p. 81. 

Kant's metanoia

"In other words, even if every single example of Swedenborg's "things heard and seen" is doubtful, it is still possible that his spiritual world exists. However, Kant's earlier discussions have shown once and for all that, although one may think all sorts of things about  spiritual beings, once cannot know anything about them. And this leads him to a passage of crucial importance in the history of philosophy. For it is here that we see him, as it were, close the book on positive metaphysics that had preoccupied him in his writings so far and open a new one that will eventually lead to his mature Kritiken." 

-- Swedenborg, Oetinger, Kant: Three Perspectives on the Secrets of Heaven, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2007, p. 96.

"The terra incognita left room at least..." 1908

"The world has taken an immense stride in the direction of prose during your and my lifetime, and a purely utilitarian world is much less entertaining at least than one in which there was more demand on courage and more possibility of adventure. The terra incognita of our maps seventy years ago stimulated the imagination far more than the excellent maps of our United States surveyors and our geographical magazines. The terra incognita left room at least in which imagination might roam at will, keeping us in touch with Sir John Mandeville."

-- Letter of 28 July, 1908 of Charles Eliot Norton to H. H. Furness, in Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, vol. II, 1913, p. 414.

~340 miles on foot for books, 1838

"During his first year at Halle [1838], he [Winckelmann, age 21] was to give a further demonstration of initiative by walking all the way to Hamburg [~170 miles], where a former professor's library, that of the father-in-law of Lessing's friend Samuel Reimarus, was being auctioned off, and returning on foot with his purchases on his back."

-- Winckelmann, Wolfgang Leppmann, 1970, p. 32.

Tragicless Suffering?

"...Gregory [the Great] does not so much answer the problem of innocent suffering, as suggest that given the Christian apparatus with which he views the problem, the problem in essence disappears. Questions about innocent suffering become irrelevant because there are no innocent sufferers.
"Along the way, Gregory finds ample evidence in the book of Job for original sin, fallen angels, demonic possession, and the surety of both resurrection and immortality -- all notions that render questions about innocent suffering obsolete, for in the final analysis Gregory uses survival after death to answer the problem of evil, along with the Divine Plan answer.
"Like other Christian commentators before him, Gregory removes what might be called the 'tragic element' of the text. An insoluble problem is replaced by exhortations to be patient because survival after death and a final reckoning will prove there is no tragedy, at least not for those who are saved. In the end Gregory resorts to a teleological resolution to the problem of evil, a resolution to take place beyond the grave."

-- The Image of the Biblical Job: A History, Volume Two: Job in the Medieval World, Stephen Vicchio, 2006, p. 36.

Original Sin or Yeser Ha-ra?

"That there is no real doctrine of original sin in the Hebrew Bible is a foregone conclusion in contemporary scholarship. The major point of view in the Old Testament regarding the origins of evil is the notion that God gives each human being two imaginations[,] a good and an evil one. Evil is committed in the Old Testament view when one uses his will in the service of the yeser ha-ra, the evil imagination."

-- The Image of the Biblical Job: A History, Volume Two: Job in the Medieval World, Stephen Vicchio, 2006, p. 16.