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Self-will is so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.
Whoever you are, who read these lines, think about your position and your duties, not upon your position as landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, clergyman, priest, or soldier, which temporarily call you, nor of the imaginary duties which these positions impose upon you, but think about your real and eternal condition as a human being.
The perception of the sun by an astronomer and by a scientist is far inferior to the seeing of the invisible God and it is inferior to the knowledge that comes from God.
Without courage, there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one.
Where Nature is sovereign, there is no need for austerity and self-denial.
Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, “It will not benefit me.” As by the falling of raindrops a jar of water is filled, so the wise man becomes full of good, even though he collects it little by little.
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.
Lovers do not themselves seek and yearn. In all the world there is no one seeking but He!
When we have reached love, we have reached God and our journey is at an end.
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution.
Somewhere about this time I was very much struck by a talk about the sun, the planets, and the moon. I do not remember how this talk began. But I remember that G. drew a small diagram and tried to explain what he called the “correlation of forces in different worlds.” This was in connection with the previous talk, that is, in connection with the influences acting on humanity. The idea was roughly this: humanity, or more correctly, organic life on earth, is acted upon simultaneously by influences proceeding from various sources and different worlds; influences from the planets, influences from the moon, influences from the sun, influences from the stars. All these influences act simultaneously; one influence predominates at one moment and another influence at another moment. And for man there is a certain possibility of making a choice of influences; in other words, of passing from one influence to another.
Follow my advice, and leave off your difficult seeking for the knowledge of God by means of your selfish will and reasoning. Throw away that imaginary reason, which your mortal self thinks to possess, and your will shall then be the will of God. If He finds His will to be in His, then will is will become manifest in your will as in His own property. He is All, and whatever you wish to know in the All is in Him. There is nothing hidden before Him, and you will see in His own light.
I will have care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a humiliating, and the heaviest of all servitudes. Liberty is maintained by moderate desires.
There is no consolation except in truth alone.
As the mind is made intelligent, the capacity of the soul for pure enjoyment is proportionately increased.
It is not necessary to go off on a tour of great cathedrals in order to find the Deity. Look within. You have to sit still to do it.
In general we must not wish for the disappearance of any of our troubles, but grace to transform them.
Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
