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With a large number of people, it is quite evident that their power of sight wholly predominates over their power of thought; they seem to be conscious of their existence only when they are making a noise.
There is no reason for despair. You need not fancy it is impossible to regulate your life in accordance with abstract ideas and maxims… the first thing to do is to understand the rule; the second thing is to learn the practice of it. The theory may be understood at once by an effort of reason, and yet the practice of it acquired only in the course of time.
There is one thing that, more than any other, throws people absolutely off their balance — the thought that you are dependant upon them. This is sure to produce an insolent and domineering manner towards you… they soon come to fancy that they can take liberties with you, and so they try to transgress the laws of politeness. This is why there are so few people with whom you care to become more intimate, and why you should avoid familiarity with shallow people.
Gradual practice makes him perfect, through a long series of slips, blunders, and fresh starts. It is just the same as in other things you learn.
It is natural for great minds — the true teachers of humanity — to care little about the constant company of others, just as little as the schoolmaster cares for joining in the frolic of the noisy crowd of boys which surrounds him. The mission of these great minds is to guide mankind over the sea of error to the harbor of truth, to draw men back from the dark abyss of barbarous crudeness into the light of culture and refinement.
The useful and the beautiful are never separated.
Truth is the agreement of the mind with itself.
He who does not understand how the soul contains the Beautiful within itself, seeks to realize beauty without, by laborious production.
His aim should be to concentrate and simplify, and so to expand his being… and so to float upwards towards the divine fountain of being whose stream flows within him.
Our life is like a journey in which, as we advance, the landscape takes a different view from that which is presented at first, and changes again, as we come nearer. This is just what happens, especially with our desires. We often find something else, no, something better than what we were looking for… Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure, happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge — a real and permanent blessing, instead of a disappearing and illusory one. In their search for gold, the alchemists discovered other things — gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature. There is a sense in which we are all alchemists.
The present alone is true and actual; it is the only time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively. Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it the welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour.
You must have patience. He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time.
Simplicity, therefore, will contribute to happiness… Our existence will glide on peacefully like a stream which no waves or whirlpools disturb.
Your true spiritual responsibility is not how you arrive but that you continually set out upon the journey.
Freedom from what is unwanted by us begins by awakening to what is unknown within us.
Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present, and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we desire to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness or generosity or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence.
Man’s true nature, his true good, true virtue, and true religion, are things of which the knowledge is inseparable.
When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads. This feeling was there before, although one did not know it. Therefore, one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.
A principle installed into a good mind brings forth fruit.
