Johan Wolfgang van Gogh said life is the childhood…

Johan Wolfgang van Gogh said life is the childhood of our immortality?

— from The Landing (Death) · Hope, Not Fear by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

In the book

Seneca turned the whole fear inside out and called the day we dread as our last the very birthday of eternity. Goethe agreed in his own key, calling this life the childhood of our immortality. Hold the end not as a threat hanging over the flight but as the horizon that gives the flight its direction. — The Landing (Death)

A student once told his rabbi he had learned the entire body of law; the rabbi answered, "But what did it teach you?" — because it is never the learning that is crucial, only the actions the learning brings about. Goethe called this life the childhood of our immortality; what you do in the childhood is what grows up and walks on without you. We change the world, all of us, continually and without noticing — which makes us almost God-like in our small way — and the one thing required to make those changes beautiful is forethought, doing what we do on purpose and aiming at a good result. — Legacy / The Logbook (Legacy/Epilogue)

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