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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Nought’s had, all’s spent,
When our desire is got without content:
‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
There is a demand these days for men who can make wrong conduct appear right.
As a man in his sleep doubts the reality of his nightmares and yearns to awaken and return to real life, so the average man of our day cannot, in the depths of his heart, believe the terrible condition in which he finds himself — and which is growing worse and worse — to be a reality. He yearns to attain to a higher reality, the consciousness of which is already within him… Our average man has but to make a conscious effort and ask himself, “Is not all this an illusion?” in order to feel like an awakened sleeper, transported from a hypocritical and horrible nightmare-world into a living, peaceful, and joyous world of reality.
Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes metanoia, the mind with itself and so free from itself.
On Reincarnation: Ego reincarnates with each thought but dies between them — here lies secret power of being still.
Who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest.
Consider what your bondage is in the world. What do you not have to suffer to keep the esteem of those men whom you scorn?
Pleasure can be supported by illusion, while happiness rests upon truth.
Oh Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, I come to you as one of your many children. I need your strength and your wisdom. Make me strong not to be superior to my brother, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, Myself.
We know that when the rich man asked how he could gain eternal life the answer was: “If you will be perfect follow me.” The meaning, in the Greek, is to reach one’s goal. “Sin” meant, in the original, “missing the mark.” The psychological idea emerges quite clearly when we consider the real meaning of these two words. The goal is to perfect oneself, to become complete, and sin is all that that causes one to miss the goal.
Everything lies in relationship, in how you relate yourself to things. You cannot change the thing itself but you can change your relationship to it.
We become so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that at last we are disguised to ourselves.
Nature has not said to me, “Be not poor,” still less, “Be rich.” She calls out to me, “Be independent!”
We only fail to see the fact that the life we lead is discordant with human nature, because all those horrors among which we quietly live, have come about so gradually that we have not noticed them.
I exist as I am — that is enough. If no other in the world be aware, I sit content.
When people are made righteous by philosophy they have stored help for themselves and inward perception which leads to reverence for God.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
There is an endless Kingdom to be inhabited.
One must strive to become what one is.
Drink from your own cistern, and make use of your own resources. You are not merely watering the earth but enlightening human souls.
