Browse by: Quotation Source | The Seeker | The Search | The Sacred
Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Knowledge alone disperses ignorance,
As sunlight scatters darkness.
Not so acts,
For ignorance originates in works.
When a farmer is irrigating his field the water is already in the canals, only there are gates which keep the water in. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So, all human progress and power are already in everything; this perfection is every man’s nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature. Then the man attains the powers which are his already.
You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man; a contented mind confers it on all.
If you wish to maintain a will conformable to nature, you have every security, every facility, you have no troubles. If you wish to maintain what is in your own power and is naturally free, and if you are content with these, what else do you care for? For who is the master of such things? Who can take them away? If you choose to be modest and faithful, who shall not allow you to be so?
The Man Watching
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
If three people meet and one of them is keeping inner peace, the second is giving thanks to God in sickness, the third is serving others from an unselfish motive, those three are performing the same work.
The central urge in every atom, to return to its divine source and origin.
Observe how much more pain is brought on by your anger and frustrations over other’s actions, than by the actions themselves.
Truth is truth
To th’end of reck’ning.
Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
Finally, the mind of man is so constructed that it is taken far more with disguises than with realities.
We receive but what we give.
Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.
I do not wish to live what is not life.
A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not.
If you made a list of everything you own, everything you think of as you, everything you prefer, that list would be the distance between you and the living truth.
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
The seed of the oak produces oaks, and is never converted by circumstances into a beech tree.
All gloom is but a dream and a shadow… cheerfulness is the real truth.
