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Dreams, indeed, are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment is intuition.
Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation.
There is no pleasing the fear that you may displease others.
Remain in peace; the fervor of devotion does not depend upon yourself; all that lies in your power is the direction of your will. Give that up to God without reservation. The important question is not how much you enjoy religion, but whether you will whatever God wills. Humbly confess your faults; be detached from the world, and abandoned to God; love him more than yourself, and his glory more than your life; the least you can do is to desire and ask for such a love. God will then love you and put his peace in your heart.
A quiet mind knows the answer, which means we must cease to fight anxiously for the answer.
I want to meet you to see if, at the end of this meeting, we leave as two.
Suppose a neighbor should desire to light a candle at your fire, would it deprive your flame of light, because another profits by it?
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; he who would search for pearls must dive below.
We think this state (of uncertainty) is terrible. We are wrong. It is there that we find peace and liberty.
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said “All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them.”
The tormenting feeling of hopelessness exists only in a person who still thinks he must be who he thinks he must be. The agony of hopelessness falls away from anyone who really sees he need not be anyone at all in the eyes of himself or the world. Then, hopelessness is replaced by living with complete power and peace — a new kind of power, a new kind of peace.
The mind is the master over every kind of fortune; it acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and its own misery.
The Veil
My yearning has loosened
the veil hiding Beauty.
She is now mine — but alas,
My own sight is there blocking the view.
The beat of my own heart sounds in my ear.
The wish to live as others do has long been silenced.
What does their world have to offer?
Nothing but the echo of voices yelling, “more, more.”
I prefer those men of genius who awaken in me the sense of truth, and who increase the sum of one’s inner liberty.
Wisdom consists in performing only useful actions.
Your changed complexions are to me a mirror
Which shows me mine changed too; for I must be
A party in this alteration, finding
Myself thus alter’d with’t.
Thou that has given so much to me, give one thing more: a grateful heart. Not thankful when it please me, as if thy blessings had spare days. But such a heart whose pulse may be thy praise.
By humility, out of an enemy He has made a friend, which is more than to have created a new earth.
