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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Paradise is still in the world, but a man is not in Paradise unless he is born again of God; in that case he stands in his new birth.
Despair is the greatest of our errors.
The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind — the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.
That which you do not understand when you read, you will understand in the day of your visitation, for many secrets of religion are not perceived til they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of calamity.
I am by Nature made for my own good, not for my own evil.
If life knocks you flat on your back, open your eyes… Above you are the stars.
During the gap — infinitesimal though it be — between two thoughts, the ego vanishes. Hence it may truly be said that with each thought it reincarnates anew. There is no real need to wait for the series of long-lived births to be passed through before liberation can be achieved. The series of momentary births also offers this opportunity, provided a man knows how to use it.
Man has inner necessities. His emotional life is not satisfied by outer things. His organization is not only to be explained in terms of adaptation to outer life. He needs ideas to give meaning to his existence. There is that in him that can grow and develop — some further state of himself — not lying in “tomorrow,” but above him.
You are not a prophet, but go humbly on the way of the prophets, and you can arrive where they are. Don’t try to steer the boat. Don’t open a shop by yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God’s mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, and if you do speak, ask for explanations.
There comes for ever something between us and what we deem our happiness.
Every great mind seeks to labor for eternity. All men are captivated by immediate advantage; great minds alone are excited by the prospect of distant good.
You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building nests in your hair.
It is good to tame the mind.
We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible.
Modest doubt is call’d the beacon of the wise.
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.
This energy does not descend into individual life on any other condition than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whomever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur.
We are surrounded by a wall built of our conceptions of the world, and are unable to look over this wall at the real world.
If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing.
This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.