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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
A man can understand what is similar to something already existing in himself.
It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man’s city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else’s life? His sanctity will never be yours. You must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone…
For pride, which is the inordinate attribution of goods and values and glories to one’s own contingent self, cannot exist where there is no contingent self to which anything can be attributed.
Shade said to Shadow, “A little while ago, you were moving, and now you are standing still. A little while ago, you were sitting down, and now you are getting up. Why all this indecision?”
Shadow replied, “Don’t I have to depend on others to be what I am? Don’t others also have to depend on something else to be what they are? My dependence is like that of the snake on his skin, or of the cicada on his wing. How can I tell why I do this, or why I do that?”
Only the illimitable permanent is here. A peace stupendous, featureless, still replaces all, what once was I, in it a silent unnamed emptiness content either to fade in the unknowable or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.
Why do you look without for that which is within you?
Love between human beings springs from a desire to be made free of another world than one’s own. Every true communion of lovers is a mutual discovery and recognition. Every passion is a passion for release, for that loss of one’s self by which alone one gains life.
Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now.
There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People have been told almost since the creation of the world that they are asleep and that they must awaken. How many times is this said in the Gospels, for instance? “Awake,” “watch,” “sleep not.” Christ’s disciples even slept when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane for the last time. It is all there.
I was born when all I once feared, I could love.
There is only one great life. I can enter into the experience only if I have first come to unity in myself, only if I have come to be whole.
All writings, both of secular and of divine wisdom, yield instruction when effort is applied.
What we call conscience, is, in many instances, only a wholesome fear of the constable.
What is your aim? To be good? And how is this accomplished except by general principles, some about the nature of the universe, and others about the proper constitution of man.
Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.
It is no proof of a man’s understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence.
What you want also wants you. If you seek the celestial the celestial also seeks you. There are no unanswered requests in the universe. If we do not like what we are receiving, we can learn to ask for something different. Then we will find what we wish.
Every reaction in the form of hatred or evil is so much loss to the mind, and every evil thought or deed or hatred, or any thought of reaction, if it is controlled, will be laid in our favor. It is not that we lose by thus restraining ourselves; we are gaining infinitely more that we suspect… it is so much good energy stored up in our favor; that piece of energy will be converted into higher powers.
The man himself must become other than he was if he wants to comprehend truth — must become as true as truth itself.
Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a foolish man content, and that is why most men are miserable.
