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From this kind of knowledge arises the most perfect satisfaction and contentment.
Hardly one in ten thousand will have the strength of mind to ask himself seriously and earnestly, “Is that true?”
It is not “man” in the abstract who recognizes anything. It is always a certain principle, having become active in him, that recognizes its own counterpart in external nature, when it comes in contact with it. Only he in whom is light can see the light; only the element of love can feel love; only the divinity in man can know God in and through man.
Be surprised at nothing. Let peace and stillness flood through you and envelop you completely in its cloak. Put on the whole armour of love — and yet feel, feel very deeply. Let tears flow, washing away impurities until you feel clean within and clean without. Become like an empty vessel ready to be filled with life’s nectar.
Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature… The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air.
There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.
What is the use of the most sovereign of medicines while they stand on the sick man’s table? What is the mightiest of truths so long as it is not believed? The spiritually sick still mocks at the medicine offered; he will not know its cure.
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. If it is above us, it is also within us. In yielding to it we are not submitting to an outward and arbitrary law or to an external authority, but to a law which has become our own law, an authority which has become enthroned in the inmost essence of our being.
If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position… how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer. If you get what you don’t want, you suffer. Even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change, free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
It is the going out from oneself that is love and not the accident of its return. It is the expedition, whether it fail or succeed.
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
The happy never say, and never hear said, farewell.
Dare to be wise!
Death is not an event in life… we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius.
To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me… leading wherever I choose.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
When I attained Absolute Perfect Enlightenment, I attained absolutely nothing. That is why it is called Absolute Perfect Enlightenment.
