Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them?
One doth not know how much an ill word may empoison liking.
We are very near to greatness. One step and we are safe. Can we not take the leap?
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
The “man of the way” is a familiar concept in all religions. The elect are “called to be saint.” The Buddhist marga, the “path of liberation,” once entered will be followed to the attainment of perfected being. The man of the way in Sufism is the salik or seeker of the truth.
He that forsakes suffering is at his journey’s end.
Observe how much more pain is brought on by your anger and frustrations over other’s actions, than by the actions themselves.
Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow you will arrive there and know them by inhabiting them.
If ever two were one, then surly we.
As ever man is loved by God, then truly me.
Be a philosopher… but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
No man is damaged by an action which is not his own.
For never any thing can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.
No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls. It is true that a sudden illumination may now and then light up a destiny and impel a man in a new direction. But illumination is vision, suddenly granted the spirit, at the end of a long and gradual preparation. Bit by bit I learnt my grammar. I was taught my syntax. My sentiments were awakened. And now suddenly a poem strikes me in the heart.
To be upset at anything which happens to us is a separation of ourselves from nature.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh, that is to say, over fear, fear of poverty, of suffering… There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
