The Man Watching I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes that a storm is coming, and I hear the far-off fields say things I can’t bear without a friend, I can’t love without a sister. The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on across the woods and across time, […]
Rainer Maria Rilke Quote – “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses…”
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926)
Rainer Maria Rilke Quote – “I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart…”
I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is […]
Mahmud Shabistari Quote – “The stakes are high for real prayer…”
The stakes are high for real prayer. You must gamble yourself and be willing to lose. When you have done this, and your self shakes off what you believed your self to be, then no prayer remains, only a sparkle of the eyes. Knower and known are one. If you penetrate the center of time and space, You can bypass […]
Mahmud Shabistari Quote – “Go sweep out the chamber of your heart…”
Go sweep out the chamber of your heart. Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved. When you depart out, He will enter it. In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauties. Mahmud Shabistari (1288 – 1340)
Arthur Schopenhauer Quote – “All truth passes through three stages…”
All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860)
Leo Tolstoy Quote – “Men are like rivers, the water is the same in one and all…”
One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special definite qualities: that he is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; […]
Claudian Quote – “He who strikes terror into others is himself in continual fear.”
He who strikes terror into others is himself in continual fear. Claudian (circa 370 – 404)
Synesius of Cyrene Quote – “Man is not some simple object, nor is he cast in one pattern…”
Man is not some simple object, nor is he cast in one pattern, but God has made to dwell in the constitution of a single creature a host of forces mingled together and with full-toned voices. We are, I think, a monstrous animal more extraordinary than the Hydra and still more many-headed. For not with the same part of our […]
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki Quote – “It is useless for the ‘self’ to try to ‘purify itself’…”
It is useless for the “self” to try to “purify itself,” or for the “self” to “make a place in itself” for God. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870 – 1966)