Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Browse through the Newest Additions to the One Journey Living Book
Arranged by date, with the most recent entry appearing first…
I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instructions from abroad not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt, its own energies.
If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
Where none will sweat but for promotion,
And having that, do choke their service up
Even with the having: it is not so with thee.
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.
The soul’s communication of truth is the highest event in nature… and this communication is an influx of the Divine Mind into our mind… Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.
There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief.
A light heart lives long.
Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves.
Happy is the man to whom Heaven has given a morsel of bread without laying him under the obligation of thanking any other for it than Heaven itself.
I would have nobody to control me; I would be absolute… Now, he that is absolute can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure can be content; and he that can be content has no more to desire. So the matter is over, and come what will, I am satisfied.
I may be asked what I mean by “Inward Spiritual Freedom”… Spiritual freedom is the attribute of a mind in which reason and conscience have begun to act, and which is free through its own energy, through fidelity to the truth, through resistance to temptation… We are in the midst of influences which menace the intellect and heart; and to be free is to withstand and conquer these.
Cannot a strong interest turn difficulty into pleasure? Let the love of truth, of which I have spoken, be awakened, and obstacles in the way to it will whet, not discourage, the mind, and inspire a new delight into its acquisition.
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are our learning likewise is.
Endeavour to be inclined always:
not to the easiest, but to the most difficult;
not to the most delightful, but to the most distasteful;
not to the most gratifying, but to the less pleasant;
not to what means rest for you, but to hard work;
not to the consoling, but to the unconsoling;
not to the most, but to the least;
not to the highest and most precious, but to the lowest and most despised;
not to wanting something but to wanting nothing.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
