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What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible existence? They cover simply our actual experience, our human knowledge of facts or events. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things… this darkness is the source of our vague fear and anxiety, but also the home of the gods. They alone see the connections, the total relevance of everything that happens; that which now comes to us in bits and pieces, the accidents which exist only in our heads, in our limited perceptions.
Man is a mystery. If you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
The mind should be kept independent of any thoughts that arise within it. If the mind depends on anything, it has no sure haven.
The man who comes into the world with the notion that he is really going to instruct it in matters of the highest importance, may thank his stars if he escapes with a whole skin.
As physicians always have their instruments ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do you have principles ready for insight into both divine and human affairs, and for doing everything, even the smallest, with an awareness of the bond which unites the divine and the human. For you will not do anything well which pertains to man without also doing well in the divine, and vice versa.
We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides… And so, for the first time in my life perhaps (although I am supposed to meditate every day!), I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came — arising I know not from where — the current which I dare to call my life.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
A soul also desires many kisses of the Word, so that she may be enlightened with the light of the knowledge of God. For this is the kiss of the Word, I mean the light of holy knowledge.
We can console ourselves for not having great talents as we console ourselves for not having great places. We can be above both in our hearts.
We would desire few things ardently if we had a perfect knowledge of what we were desiring.
The less tenderness a man has in his own nature, the more he requires if from others.
To build up that strength of mind which apprehends and cleaves to great universal truths, is the highest intellectual culture.
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
The being who has attained harmony, and every being may attain it, has found his place in the order of the universe and represents the divine thought as clearly as a flower or a solar system. Harmony seeks nothing outside itself. It is what it ought to be; it is the expression of right, order, law and truth; it is greater than time, and represents eternity.
There is at the surface infinite variety of things; at the center there is simplicity of cause.
The worst of human errors spring in most cases from the fact that men who stand on a low intellectual level, when they encounter events of a higher order, instead of trying to rise to the higher level from which these events can be rightly viewed, and making an effort to understand them, judge them by their own low standards, and the less they know of what they speak, the more arrogant and fixed are their judgements.
There is no death… Only a change of worlds.
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
