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There comes a time when, on the one hand, a vague awakening consciousness stirs the soul, the consciousness of the higher law… and the sufferings a man endures from the contradictions of life, compel him to renounce the social order and to adopt the new… And this time has now arrived.
They said to him, “Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you.” He said to them, “You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine this moment.”
There is no rest in this work: the highest serves most lovingly; the wisest listens best; the one who has seen gives his whole life to help others to see. This is the divine way.
Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee.
The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
A principle installed into a good mind brings forth fruit.
The “resurrection” is not of the so-called dead, but of the living who are “dead” in the sense of never having entered upon true life.
Dare to be wise!
But believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance and trust that in this love there is a strength and a blessing, out beyond which you do not have to step in order to go very far!
Prudence is that virtue by which we discern what is proper to be done under the various circumstances of time and place.
This is the greatest work of all. In order to show and release her powers, Nature has no need of fortune; she shows herself equally on all levels, and behind a curtain as well as without one. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, to rule, to lay up treasure, to build, are at most but little appendices and props.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
As one beholds through a small window
A single green leaf,
a small patch of the vast blue sky,
So I began to perceive Thee,
in the beginning of All things.
As the leaf faded and withered,
the patch covered as with a Dark cloud,
So didst Thou fade and vanish,
But to be reborn again,
As the single green leaf,
as the small patch of the blue sky.
For many lives have I seen the bleak winter and the Green spring.
Prisoned in my little room,
I could not behold the entire tree nor the whole sky.
I swore there was no tree nor the vast sky — That was the truth.
Through time and destruction My window grew large.
I beheld, Now,
A branch with many leaves,
And a greater patch of the blue, with many clouds.
I forgot the single green leaf,
the small patch of the vast blue.
I swore there was no tree, nor the immense sky — That was the truth.
Weary of this prison,
This small cell, I raged at my window.
With bleeding fingers I tore away brick after brick,
I beheld, Now,
The entire tree, its great trunk,
Its many branches, and its thousand leaves,
And an immense part of the sky.
I swore there was no other tree,
no other part to the sky — That was the truth.
This prison no longer holds me, I flew away through the window,
O friend, I behold every tree and the vast expanse of the limitless sky.
Though I live in every single leaf and in every small
Patch of the vast blue sky,
Though I live in every prison,
looking out through every small casement, Liberated am I.
Lo! not a thing shall bind me — This is the truth.
A man is best off if he is thrown upon his own resources, and can be all in all to himself, and Cicero goes so far as to say that a man who is in this condition cannot fail to be very happy.
For whilst in one sense we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in reality our truer self. The life of absolute truth or reason is not a life that is foreign to us. In yielding to it we are not submitting to an outward and arbitrary law or to an external authority, but to a law that has become our own law, an authority which has become enthroned in the inmost essence of our being.