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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
But when the observer is the observed — when the thinking is the experience — then there is no more thought.
The mind should be kept independent of any thoughts that arise within it. If the mind depends on anything, it has no sure haven.
But by never coming to an end it seems to make some attempt at rivialing that which it can never fully realize in its being.
And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.
Justice not only saves those who possess it, but also leads many others to desire it, and always transports them from death to eternal immortality.
Do what you should do when you should do it. Refuse to do what you should not do. And when it is not clear, wait until you are sure.
For if Life were questioned a thousand years and asked, “Why Live?”, and if there were an answer, it could be no more than this: “I live only to live!” And that is because Life is its own reason for being, springs from its own source, and goes on and on, without ever asking why — just because it is life. Thus, if you ask a genuine person, that is, one who acts (uncalculatingly) from his heart, “Why are you doing that?”, he will reply in the only possible way: “I do it because I do it!”
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
If you made a list of everything you own, everything you think of as you, everything you prefer, that list would be the distance between you and the living truth.
Horses and oxen have four feet. That is natural. Place a halter on the head of a horse, or a rope through the nose of an ox. This is unnatural.
Happy is he who bears within himself a god, an ideal of beauty, and obeys it; ideal of art, of science, of patriotism, of the virtues symbolized by the Gospels. These are living sources of great thoughts and great acts. All are lighted by reflection from the infinite.
More radiant than the sun, purer than the snow, subtler than the ether, is the Self, the spirit within my heart. I am that Self, that Self am I.
To come to the pleasure you have not
You must go by a way in which you enjoy not.
To come to the knowledge you have not
You must go by a way in which you know not.
To come to the possession you have not
You must go by a way in which you possess not.
To come to be what you are not
You must go by a way in which you are not.
Where God is, all agree.
Thou that has given so much to me, give one thing more: a grateful heart. Not thankful when it please me, as if thy blessings had spare days. But such a heart whose pulse may be thy praise.
The greatest of all crosses is self. If we die in part every day, we shall have but little to do on the last. These little daily deaths will destroy the power of the final dying.
The divine and conceptual scriptures are compared with dew, with water, with milk, with wine, and with honey, for they have the power like water to produce life, like milk to give growth, like vine to revive, like honey both to purify and preserve.
If a man would find the Key of Knowledge, let him find himself.
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future. And time future contained in time past.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage. We have opened you.
