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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
The limit of your present understanding is not the limit of your possibilities.
It is always with us, but there must be an opening of the heart to it, and though it is always there, yet it is only felt and found by those who are attentive to it, depend upon, and humbly wait for it.
Those who do not love the truth take as a pretext that it is disputed, and that a multitude deny it. And so their error arises only from the fact that they do not love either truth or charity.
What remains concealed can never be healed.
The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain, and not a reservoir. That which is filled by merely pumping in, will be emptied by pumping out.
Love’s conqueror is he whom love conquers.
On a Drop of Dew
See how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where ’twas born
Round in itself incloses:
And in its little globe’s extent,
Frames as it can its native element.
How it the purple flow’r does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure,
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flow’r be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green,
And recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away:
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day,
Dark beneath, but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go,
How girt and ready to ascend,
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna’s sacred dew distill,
White and entire, though congealed and chill,
Congealed on earth : but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of th’ almighty sun.
There are three things which are real. God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.
Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with great truth catch mere simplicity;
Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,
With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.
So God most high has said, “When I love a servant, I am his ear, so that he hears by me; I am his eye, so that he sees by me; and I am his tongue, so that he speaks by me.”
O Lord, I cannot plead my love of thee. I plead thy love of me, The shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.
What is a man’s first duty? The answer brief: To be himself.
We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.
Truth is not something lying in time, in the future, but is something here, now, only above us, above our present consciousness.
Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over. Nothing.
As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.
Ramakrishna used to tell a story of some men who went into a mango orchard and busied themselves in counting the leaves, the twigs, and the branches, examining their colour, comparing their size, and noting down everything most carefully, and then got up a learned discussion on each of these topics… But one of them, more sensible than the others, did not care for all these things, and instead thereof, began to eat the mango fruit. And was he not wise? So leave the counting of leave and twigs and this note taking to others… You can never once see a strong spiritual man among these “leaf-counters.”
A good disposition I far prefer to gold, for gold is the gift of fortune, while goodness of disposition is the gift of nature. I prefer much rather to be called good than fortunate.
There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
