Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him, I will find myself, and if I find my true self, I will find Him.
To believe that happiness exists in a feverish ambition, rather than in a tender and simple affection, is to believe that the immensity of the sea will more readily quench thirst than the pure, clear water of a humble fountain.
In yourself lies the sweetness of your charm, from you does it blossom, in you it sojourns, within you it rests, in your own self you must search for the jubilant quality of your conscience. For that reason Solomon says, “Drink water out of your own cistern and the streams out of your own well.”
The chief of our concerns is that of ourselves, yet how often have we not been told by the inner voice, that to pursue our own interests at the expense of others would be to do wrong! So we imagine that we are sometimes obeying the impulse of nature, but all the while we are resisting it. In listening to the voice of our senses, we turn a deaf ear to the dictates of our heart.
The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one and the same.
All belief that does not make us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, a mistaken and superstitious belief.
There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be the day you laugh is also here and now.
It is all the same to be living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old, as each of these alternately change into the other.
All is whole;
Not one word more of the consumed time.
Let’s take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals ere we can effect them.
Love is not thinking, but being.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Holiness is what is loved by all the gods. It is loved because it is holy, and not holy because it is loved.
Christ would never have made the impression He did on His followers if He had not expressed something that was alive and active in their unconscious. Christianity would never have spread through the pagan world with such astonishing rapidity had its ideas not found an analogous psychic readiness to receive them. It is this fact which also makes it possible to say that whoever believes in Christ is not only contained in Him, but that Christ then dwells in the believer as the perfect man formed in the image of God.
Doubt brings about lasting understanding; doubt is not an end in itself. What is true is revealed only through doubt, through questioning the many illusions, traditional values and ideals.
Wisdom is so kind and wise that wherever you may look you can learn something about God. Why would not the omnipresent teach that way?
Simplicity, therefore, will contribute to happiness… Our existence will glide on peacefully like a stream which no waves or whirlpools disturb.
Prudence is that virtue by which we discern what is proper to be done under the various circumstances of time and place.
