Key Quotes from The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade
by johnataylor · 6 things on NewTwos
- "... Man's reactions to nature are often conditioned by his culture and hence, finally, by history" (15).
- "When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse" (21).
- ",,, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center" (21).
- "... nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation--and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point" (22).
- "To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior" (23).
- On the profane experience, "Properly speaking, there is no longer any world, there are only fragments of a shattered universe ..." (23).