Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Dear to us are those who love us, but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life, they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it; and with this I begin and end.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.
When the ship does not yield to the rudder, it yields to the rock.
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.
It matters not what our evils are… hardness of heart, covetousness, wrath, pride, and ambition, etc., our remedy is always one and the same, always at hand, always certain and infallible.
A cucumber is bitter? Throw it away. There are briars in the road? Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, “Why were such things made in the world?”
It is most important for anyone who is capable of higher and nobler thoughts to keep his mind from being so completely engrossed with private affairs and ungracious troubles as to let them take up all his attention and crowd out worthier matters, for that is, in a very real sense, to lose sight of the true end of life.
A hundred thousand tongues may discourse to you about the sweetness of honey, but you can never have knowledge of it except by taste.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
All’s well that ends well yet,
Though time seem so adverse and means unfit.
That which you do not understand when you read, you will understand in the day of your visitation, for many secrets of religion are not perceived til they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of calamity.
But now you are awake; it is but a dream you had! For horror’s prey in darkness of the night is but our reason’s sport in morning light.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Very religious people always shock slightly religious people by their blasphemous attitude to religion… and it was precisely for blasphemy that Jesus was crucified.
We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.
God related to Catherine of Siena: “Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you will have beatitude within your grasp. You are she who is not, and I am He who is.”
As the heart, so is the life. The within is ceaselessly becoming the without. Nothing remains unrevealed. That which is hidden is but for a time; it ripens and comes forth at last. Seed, tree, blossom, and fruit is the fourfold order of the universe. From the state of a man’s heart proceed the conditions of his life; his thoughts blossom into deeds, and his deeds bear the fruitage of character and destiny.
If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Night’s Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
Do you wish always to stray further? See, good lies as near; learn only to grasp happiness, for happiness is always here.
