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…
No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls. It is true that a sudden illumination may now and then light up a destiny and impel a man in a new direction. But illumination is vision, suddenly granted the spirit, at the end of a long and gradual preparation. Bit by bit I learnt my grammar. I was taught my syntax. My sentiments were awakened. And now suddenly a poem strikes me in the heart.
Human anguish is the product of the loss by man of his true identity.
Love is not thinking, but being.
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;
Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;
The oaks bear mast, the biers scarlet hips:
The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush
Lays her full mess before you. Want! why want?
Rich, only to be wretched, thy great fortunes
Are made thy chief afflictions.
O’ the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!
Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,
Since riches point to misery and contempt?
Who would be so mock’d with glory? or to live
But in a dream of friendship?
To have his pomp and all what state compounds
But only painted, like his varnish’d friends?
Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
I have often been irritated, though it would be comic if the consequences were not so awful, by observing how men shut one another in a delusion and cannot get out of this magic circle.
Everyone, and especially the young, should understand that to devote your lives, or even to occupy yourselves with arranging by violence the lives of others according to your own ideas, is not only a crude superstition, but is an evil, criminal business, pernicious to the soul. Understand that the desire of an enlightened human soul for the good of others, is not satisfied by the vanity of organizing their lives by means of violence, but only by that inner labor with one’s own self, wherein alone a man is free and powerful. Only that work which increases love within one, can satisfy this desire. Understand that all activity directed to organizing the life of others by violence, cannot serve the welfare of mankind, but is always more or less consciously a hypocritical deception, hiding low passions — ambition, pride or cupidity — under the mask of service to man. Understand it, especially you, the young generation of the future, and leave off doing what most of you now are doing — cease to seek for imaginary happiness in shaping the welfare of the people by means of participation in Government, in Law Courts, by teaching other people, and (in order to do that) by entering institutions that — by accustoming you to idleness, conceit and pride — deprave you, namely, all sorts of Grammar Schools and Universities.
Let a man but realize that the aim of his life is the fulfillment of God’s law, and that law will replace all other laws for him, and he will give it his sole allegiance, so that by that very allegiance every human law will lose all binding and controlling power in his eyes.
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.
We should not act and speak as if we were asleep.
Different is the Good and different is the dear,
they both, having different aims, fetter you men;
He, who chooses for himself the Good, comes to wellbeing,
he, who chooses the dear, loses the goal.
The Good and the dear approach the man,
The wise man, pondering over both, distinguishes them;
The wise one chooses the Good over the dear,
The fool, acquisitive and craving, chooses the dear.
The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under your observation in life.
If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. It is in your power to erase this judgment now. If anything in your own nature gives you pain, who hinders you from correcting your opinion?
All yesterday I was spinning,
Sitting alone in the sun;
And the dream that I spun was so lengthy,
It lasted till day was done…
I went up the hill this morning
To the place where my spinning lay —
There was nothing but glistening dewdrops
Remained of my dream to-day.
Do not look at life’s long sorrow;
See how small each moment’s pain;
God will help thee for to-morrow,
So each day begin again.
