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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.
Say nothing more to yourself than what the first appearances report. Suppose that it has been reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you. This has been reported, but that you have been injured has not been reported… Thus then always abide by the first appearances, and add nothing yourself from within, and then nothing hurtful happens to you.
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to Godliness.
For in our searchings are found all our desires, and we gain victory over our worlds.
Without humiliation, Love, when it enters the conditioned world, gets caught into the polarity of love and hate and finishes as its own opposite.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
He employs his emotion who can make no use of his reason.
It is an extraordinary fact and an extraordinary piece of evidence for the truth of religion, that a person’s long hours spent in silent communication with God, who never directly answers, is nevertheless manifestly a two-way communication. Such a person is gradually and permanently altered in the depths of his personality in ways which would be inconceivable if there was really nothing there at all.
These are not fictions of a visionary imagination, but sober truths, spoken by the word of God in scripture, and written and engraven in the book of every man’s own nature.
Let me tell you, that as here lies all the true and real freedom, which cannot be taken from you, so in the constant exercise of this freedom, that is, in a continual leaving yourself to, and depending upon the operation of God in your soul, lies all your road to heaven. No divine virtue can be had any other way.
Man does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone astray and fallen from his true place, without being able to find it again. He seeks it anxiously and unsuccessfully, everywhere in impenetrable darkness.
We are enslaved by the laws we set up for our protection, which have become our oppression.
Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
The man who has no wound on his hand may touch poison with his hand, for poison cannot affect a man with no open wound. Neither is there evil for the man free of evil.
But if then you notice that it is great, rejoice because of this, for what (ask yourself) would solitude be that had no greatness. There is but one solitude, and that is great, and not easy to bear, and to almost everybody come hours when they would gladly exchange it for any sort of intercourse, however banal and cheap, for the semblance of some slight accord with the first comer, with the unworthiest… But perhaps those are the very hours when solitude grows, for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring-times. But that must not mislead you. The necessary thing is after all but this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself and for hours meeting no one — this one must be able to attain.
Many are avidly seeking, but they alone find who remain in silence. Those who delight in a multitude of words, even though they say admirable things, are empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite your soul to God.
And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.
Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave,
and I will wear him
In my heart’s core,
ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing, never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the ship-wright… Thus sailing with sealed orders, we ourselves are the repositories of the secret packet, whose mysterious contents we long to learn. There are no mysteries out of ourselves.
