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Who in the world, then, is the man who has any authority to make any declaration about you?
Why do we follow the majority? Is it because they have more reason? No, because they have more power.
Never was anything in this world loved too much, but many things have been loved in a false way, and all in too short a measure.
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
The exterior man may be undergoing trials, but the interior man is quite free.
Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.
But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage. We have opened you.
Where there is much pretense, much has been borrowed — nature never pretends.
Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.
Wander all alone, with nothing to call upon, nothing to depend on, and God, who exists, will keep his promise to you.
In the solitary life, what I at hand becomes useless to us and what is wanting cannot be provided, since God the Creator decreed that we should require the help of one another, as it is written in scripture, so that we might associate with one another.
There are people in the world, who, having renounced all the laws of God and nature, have made laws for themselves which they strictly obey.
If you let yourself be made out in the right by another, you must no less let yourself be made out in the wrong by him. If approval and reward come to you from another, you must also expect his disapproval and punishment.
You possess a real and permanent nature. It is within you, awaiting your development of it. This authentic nature has total power to banish worry, loneliness, confusion and all other pains. It is the right door to pleasant human relations at home and in your love life. It always knows what to do for you. So seek this true self — it also seeks you. It is like discovering a secret map to a lost treasure. New inner riches will be yours to keep and enjoy. Just find out who you really are. The rest is done for you.
A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord and tyrant, who we stand in awe of night and day.
They said to him, “Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you.” He said to them, “You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine this moment.”
Inasmuch as we neither seek nor shun any object except as our understanding represents it as either good or bad, all that is necessary to right action is right judgement… and the assurance of such an acquisition cannot fail to render us contented.
The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
