The Living Book

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For this is the journey that men make: to find themselves. It doesn’t matter what else they find: fame, fortune, many loves, revenge… when the tickets are collected at the end of the ride, they are tossed in the bin marked failure.

But if a man happens to find himself, the extent of his courage, the limit of his dedication, the position in life from which he can no longer retreat, he has found a mansion he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

James Albert Michener (1907 – 1997)

There are, by the direction of the Lawgiver, certain good and substantial steps, placed even through the very midst of this Slough… these steps are hardly seen… notwithstanding, the steps be there; but the ground is good when they are once got in at the Gate.

John Bunyan (1628 – 1688)

The precious, the living, the effectual part… is that of which he sees the reasonableness and excellence; that which approves itself to his intelligence, his conscience, his heart; that which answers to deep wants in his own soul, and of which he has the witness in his own inward and outward experience.

William Ellery Channing (1780 – 1842)

You possess a real and permanent nature. It is within you, awaiting your development of it. This authentic nature has total power to banish worry, loneliness, confusion and all other pains. It is the right door to pleasant human relations at home and in your love life. It always knows what to do for you. So seek this true self — it also seeks you. It is like discovering a secret map to a lost treasure. New inner riches will be yours to keep and enjoy. Just find out who you really are. The rest is done for you.

Vernon Howard (1918 – 1992)

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.

Saadi (circa 1213 – 1291)

I hope the Great Heavenly Father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes His blessing, that we may go forth in peace and live in peace all our days, and that He will look down upon our children and finally lift us far above this Earth. And that our Heavenly Father will look upon our children as His children, that all the tribes may be His children. And as we shake hands today upon this broad plain we may forever live in peace.

Red Cloud (1822 – 1909)

But if you keep quiet, and desist from thinking and feeling with your own personal selfhood, then will the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking become revealed to you, and God will see and hear and perceive through you.

Jacob Boehme (1575 – 1624)

Saint Augustine cries, “Lord I cannot love you, but come in and love yourself in me.” According to Saint Paul, we must put off our own natural form and put on the form of God, and Saint Augustine tells us to discard our own mode of nature. Then the divine nature will flow in and be revealed. Saint Augustine says, “Those who seek and find, find not. He who seeks and finds not, he alone finds.” Saint Paul says, “What I was, was not I, it was God in me.”

Meister Eckhart (circa 1260 – 1328)