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1 " The widespread success of science is too significantan issue to be treated as if it were a happy accident that we arefree to enjoy without enquiring more deeply into why this isthe case. Critical realist achievements of this kind cannot be amatter of logical generality, something that one would expectto be attainable in all possible worlds. Rather, they are an ex-perientially confirmed aspect of the particularity of the worldin which we live and of the kind of beings that we are. Achiev-ing scientific success is a specific ability possessed by human-kind, exercised in the kind of universe that we inhabit. I believethat a full understanding of this remarkable human capacityfor scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that ourpower in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who,in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in theimage of God (Genesis 1:26–27). "
― John C. Polkinghorne , Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship
2 " In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire--in the primordial desire for life-as-relation. That the sex drive serves the vital desire for relation--that on the level of the primordial process, the desire for life-in-itself clothes itself in the sex drive--belongs to the particularity of being human. "
― Christos Yannaras , Relational Ontology
3 " Now if BECOMING history is the particularity of the Son in the economy, what is the contribution of the Spirit? Well, precisely the opposite: it is to liberate the Son and the economy from the bondage of history. If the Son dies on the cross, thus succumbing to the bondage of historical existence, it is the Spirit that raises him from the dead. The Spirit is the BEYOND history, and when he acts in history he does so in order to bring into history the last days, the ESCHATON. Hence the first fundamental particularity of Pneumatology is its eschatological character. The Spirit makes of Christ an eschatological being, the 'last Adam. "
― John D. Zizioulas , Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church
4 " The smaller man said again, 'See the Buddha in everyone.'How different, I thought, that is from Brakhage, who says it is the artist's business to discover the particularity that distinguishes you from all others. Your virtue. Your vision that makes you separate from others. I remembered that he quoted Robert Duncan. 'Soul is not universal. It is a created-creative event. "
5 " In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. If I persist in beating my fist against a stone wall, my freedom exhausts itself in this useless gesture without succeeding in giving itself a content. It debases itself in a vain contingency. Yet, there is hardly a sadder virtue than resignation. It transforms into phantoms and contingent reveries projects which had at the beginning been set up as will and freedom. A young man has hoped for a happy or useful or glorious life. If the man he has become looks upon these miscarried attempts of his adolescence with disillusioned indifference, there they are, forever frozen in the dead past. When an effort fails, one declares bitterly that he has lost time and wasted his powers. The failure condemns that whole part of ourselves which we had engaged in the effort. It was to escape this dilemma that the Stoics preached indifference. We could indeed assert our freedom against all constraint if we agreed to renounce the particularity of our projects. If a door refuses to open, let us accept not opening it and there we are free. But by doing that, one manages only to save an abstract notion of freedom. It is emptied of all content and all truth. The power of man ceases to be limited because it is annulled. It is the particularity of the project which determines the limitation of the power, but it is also what gives the project its content and permits it to be set up. There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything. But no one would dream of considering this gloomy passivity as the triumph of freedom "
― Simone de Beauvoir , The Ethics of Ambiguity