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In living creatures, ignorance of self is nature; in man it is a vice.
So the life of love is hidden, but its secret life is itself in motion and has eternity in it. As the quiet lake, however placidly it lies, is really running water — for is there not a wellspring at bottom? — so love, however quiet it is in its concealment, is ever flowing. But the quiet lake can become dry if its source sometime fails. The life of love, on the contrary, has an eternal wellspring. This life is fresh and everlasting — no cold can chill it — it is too fervent for that. And no heat can exhaust it, its coolness is too fresh for that. But it is hidden.
This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.
From all this it may be concluded that an unregenerate man is like one who sees phantoms at night… and afterwards, when he is being regenerated, he is like the same man seeing in the early dawn that the things he saw at night are delusions.
Places lie beyond these where we may live in peace, and be tempted to do no harm. We will take the road that promises to have that end, and we would not turn out of it, if it were a hundred times worse than our fears lead us to expect.
Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
You will never come to harm in the practice of virtue.
Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
Till now you have gone on and fill’d the time
With all licentious measure, making your wills
The scope of justice; till now myself and such
As slept with our traversed arms, and breathed
Our sufferance vainly: now the time is flush,
When crouching marrow in the bearer strong
Cries of itself, “No more.”
The realization of Truth is brought about by perception, and not in the least by ten millions of acts.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Is freedom anything else than the power of living as we choose? Nothing else. Tell me then, you men, do you wish to live in error? We do not. No one who lives in error is free. Do you with to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in tension? By no means. No one who is in a state of fear or sorrow or tension is free, but whoever is delivered from sorrows or fears or anxieties, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.
All the ills of mankind appear, according to Lao Tzu, not from man’s neglect of the necessary, but because he does what is unnecessary. If men would practice what Lao Tzu calls non-action, they would be free not only of their personal difficulties, but also of those residing in every form of government.
Of a certainty, the man who can see all creatures in himself, himself in all creatures, knows no sorrow.
Where belief is painful, we are slow to believe.
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause.
I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Don’t grieve for what doesn’t come.
Some things that don’t happen
Keep disasters from happening.
We are slow to believe those things which, if believed, would hurt our feelings.
You and I are the same. What I have done is surely possible for all. You are the Self now and can never be anything else. Throw your worries to the wind, turn within and find peace.
