The Living Book

Explore quotations throughout time

Browse by: Quotation SourceThe Seeker | The Search | The Sacred

Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…

You ask, “How can we know the Infinite?” I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer, in which the Divine Essence is communicated to you. This is Ecstasy. It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness.

Plotinus (circa 204 – 270)

It is necessary to study the mind itself, mind studying mind. We know that there is the power of the mind called reflective. I am talking to you… at the same time I am standing aside, as it were, a second person, and knowing and hearing that I am talking. You work and think at the same time, another portion of your mind stands by and sees that you are talking. The powers of the mind should be concentrated and turned back upon itself, and as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will this concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets… it will all be revealed to us.

Vivekananda (1863 – 1902)

He who knows the Tao is sure to be well acquainted with the principles that appear in the procedures of things. Acquainted with those principles, he is sure to understand how to regulate his actions in all kinds of circumstances. Having that understanding, he will not allow things to injure him.

Taoism

Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually. You are not living by human laws. Expect miracles and see them take place. Hold ever before you the thought of prosperity and abundance, and know that doing so sets in motion forces that will bring it into being.

Eileen Caddy (1917 – 2006)

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive… We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

Come, let us go into the body of that light. Let us live in the cleanliness of that song. Let us throw off the pieces of the world like clothing and enter naked into wisdom. For this is what all hearts pray for when they cry, “Thy will be done.”

Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968)

The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave comes to the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

John Burroughs (1837 – 1921)

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.

Upanishads (circa 800 – 200 B.C.E.)

Nothing can trouble him more, nothing can move him, for he has cut all the thousand cords of will which hold us bound to the world… as desire, fear, envy, anger, drag us here and there in constant pain. He now looks back smiling and at rest on the delusions of the world, which once were able to move and agonize his spirit also.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860)