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My unassisted heart is barren clay,
That of its native self can nothing feed;

Of Good and pious works Thou art the seed,
That quickens only where Thou sayest it may;

Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way
No man can find it; Father! Thou must lead.
Michelangelo (1475)

When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letters of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God, none of the servants. Henry David Thoreau (1817)

I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details. Albert Einstein (1879)

He to whom time is like eternity, and eternity like time, is free. Jacob Boehme (1575)

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being -- free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies -- and therefore you can find out what religion is. J. Krishnamurti (1895)

Die before you die. Muhammed (570)

These dealings of God in your life lead you to true freedom. This freedom, however, does not lead you into irresponsibility. You will still fulfill your required duties. This freedom will bring you to doing the things that God desires of you. After all, you have discovered you are in God. Jeanne Guyon (1647)

Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes metanoia, the mind with itself and so free from itself. Alan Watts (1915)

A mind that is truly free has reached the state in which opposites are seen as empty. This is the only freedom. Hui-Hai (730)

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self. Albert Einstein (1879)

Steadily he approaches the point where what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind, a window whose name is not ignorance but wonder. Alan Watts (1915)

But when people are told to seek God within, it is like telling them to go to another planet. What is farther away and more unknown than the bottom of your own heart? Francois Fenelon (1651)

If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing. Thomas Merton (1915)

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content. Helen Keller (1880)

If you bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will save you. If you fail to bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will kill you. Gospel Of Thomas (110)

Whatever you think appears in consciousness as a show. That's the way thought works to display its content, as a show of imagination. Therefore if you think the observer is separate from the observed, it's going to appear in consciousness as two different entities. The point is that the words will seem to be coming from the observer who knows, who sees, and therefore they are the truth, they are a description of the truth. That's the illusion. David Bohm (1917)

Nor do we think that many of our insoluble difficulties, perplexities, and unanswered questions necessarily exist because of the kind of consciousness we naturally possess, and that a new degree of consciousness would either cause our awareness of them to disappear or bring about an entirely new relation to them. Dr. Maurice Nicoll (1884)

We could come into a new reality of our being and perceive everything in a new relation if we can stand still from self-thinking and self-willing and stop the wheel of imagination and the senses. Jacob Boehme (1575)

Peter of Damascus assures us that "nothing is better than to realize one's weakness and ignorance, and nothing is worse than not to be aware of them." Philokalia (300)

You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building nests in your hair. Confucius (551 B.C.E.)

Where there is plenty of light there is strong shadow. Goethe (1749)

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact. Henry David Thoreau (1817)

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. Sir Isaac Newton (1642)

But where can man find the truth? If he seeks deep enough in himself he will find it revealed, each man may know his own heart. He may send a ray of his intelligence into the depths of his soul and search its bottom; he may find it to be as infinitely deep as the sky above his head. He may find corals and pearls, or watch the monsters of the deep. If his thought is steady and unwavering, he may enter the innermost sanctuary of his own temple and see the goddess unveiled. Not everyone can penetrate into such depths, because the thought is easily led astray; but the strong and persistent searcher will penetrate veil after veil, until at the innermost centre he discovers the germ of truth, which, awakened to consciousness, will grow into a sun that illuminate the whole of the interior world, wherein everything is contained. Franz Hartman (1838)

If the world goes against truth, then Athanasius goes against the world Althanasius (295)