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Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.
What your heart thinks great is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
It is no mistake then to speak of God and to honor him as known through all being… But the way of knowing God that is most worthy of Him is to know Him through unknowing, in a union that rises above all intellect. The intellect is first detached from all beings, then it goes out of itself and is united to rays more luminous than light itself. Thanks to these rays it shines in the unfathomable depths of Wisdom. It is no less true, however, as I have said, that this Wisdom can be known from every reality.
The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume.
Thinkers are as scarce as gold, but he whose thoughts embrace all his subject, pursues it persistently and is fearless of consequences, is a diamond of enormous size.
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.
We are not cast away, not separate.
That which is divine is invisible.
Nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.
The beauty lies in realizing that you have a right not to be negative, and without that realization you cannot remember yourself. All Self-Remembering has to do with the fact that you came down to this earth, and life here does not correspond with what you came down from, and something in you knows it — that is, has not forgotten it, and that means remembers it.
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
At this elevation there is no effort, no struggle.
The true critic strives for a clear vision of things as they are… his effort is to get free from himself, so that he may in no way distort that which he wishes to understand or reproduce. His superiority to the common herd lies in this effort… He distrusts his own senses, he sifts his own impressions, by returning upon them from different sides and at different times, by comparing, moderating, shading, distinguishing, and so endeavouring to approach more and more nearly to the formula which represents the maximum of truth.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the same mind at the same time.
Virtue is, like health, the harmony of the whole man.
Had I been born on a desert island, or had never seen a human creature beside myself; had I never been informed of what had formerly happened in a certain corner of the world, I might yet have learned, by the exercise and cultivation of my reason, and by the proper use of the faculties God has given me, to know and to love Him… and to have properly discharged my duty here on earth. What can the knowledge of the learned man teach me more?
