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Who stands already on heaven’s topmost dome needs not to search for ladders.
One would be apt to think, from the murmurs of impatient mortals, that God owed them a recompense before they had deserved it, and that He was obliged to reward their virtue beforehand. No, let us first be virtuous, and rest assured we shall sooner or later be happy. Let us not require the prize before we have won the victory.
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
There exists no other evil in nature than what you either do or suffer, and you are equally the author of both… Particular evil exists only in the sentiment of the suffering being; and this sentiment is not given to man by nature, but is of his own acquisition… Take away our errors and our vices… take away, in short, everything that is the work of man, and all that remains is good.
The highest enjoyment is that of being contented with ourselves. It is in order to deserve this contentment that we are placed here on earth and endowed with liberty.
It is the abuse of our faculties which make us wicked and miserable. Our cares, our anxieties, our griefs, are all owing to ourselves… If we could be contented with being what we are, we should have no inducement to lament our fate; but we inflict on ourselves a thousand real evils in seeking after an imaginary happiness.
Most are, in effect, deaf to that internal voice which, nevertheless, calls to them so loud and emphatically. A mere machine is evidently incapable of thinking… whereas in man there exists something perpetually prone to expand, and to burst the chains by which it is confined.
The chief of our concerns is that of ourselves, yet how often have we not been told by the inner voice, that to pursue our own interests at the expense of others would be to do wrong! So we imagine that we are sometimes obeying the impulse of nature, but all the while we are resisting it. In listening to the voice of our senses, we turn a deaf ear to the dictates of our heart.
Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the target at any distance.
Fortune dreads the brave.
The chief result gained by experience is clearness of view. This is what distinguishes the man of mature age… it is only then that he sees things plainly, and takes them for what they really are, while in earlier years he saw a phantom-world, put together with the whims and imaginations of his own mind… the real world was hidden from him, or the vision of it distorted. The first thing that experience does is to free us from the phantoms of the mind.
A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument — perhaps a piano, which is a small orchestra in itself. Such a man is a small world in himself, and the effects produced by various instruments together, he produces all by himself, in the unity of his own consciousness.
Whenever opposite views are held with warmth by religious-minded men, we may take it for granted there is some higher truth which embraces both. All high truth is the union of two contradictions.
There is an inward state of the heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart; purity is credible to a pure mind; life is credible to a spirit in which life beats strongly — it is incredible to other men.
Really great minds seem to have… dissipated the clouds which concealed the heaven from our view, and they thus disclose to themselves and to us a clear and blissful world of everlasting repose.
The right feeling is, “How strange this is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true.”
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one.
Had I been born on a desert island, or had never seen a human creature beside myself; had I never been informed of what had formerly happened in a certain corner of the world, I might yet have learned, by the exercise and cultivation of my reason, and by the proper use of the faculties God has given me, to know and to love Him… and to have properly discharged my duty here on earth. What can the knowledge of the learned man teach me more?
Obedience ensures greatness, while disobedience leads to defeat.
Take care how you listen to the voice of the flatterer, who, in return for his little stock of words, expects to gain considerable advantages from you. If one day you do not comply with his wishes, he charges you with two hundred defects, instead of perfections.
