Browse by: Quotation Source | Entire Living Book | The Seeker | The Search
Despite the many differences that seem to exist between peoples the world over — regardless of culture, tradition, environment, or heredity — there is but one seeker, one search, and one sacred object of our desire. The celestial source of this sacred being doesn’t just live within us… we are, in fact, one with it.
He always knows what is in men’s minds; you would do well to reflect on this. Love’s conqueror is he whom love conquers.
It is always with us, but there must be an opening of the heart to it, and though it is always there, yet it is only felt and found by those who are attentive to it, depend upon, and humbly wait for it.
You’re water. We’re the millstone.
You’re wind. We’re dust blown up into shapes.
You’re spirit. We’re the opening and closing of our hands.
You’re the clarity. We’re this language that tries to say it.
You’re joy. We’re all the different kinds of laughing.
To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws… that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
If the Beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
but when living itself becomes
the Friend, lovers disappear.
Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the sky.
He that follows the advice of reason has a mind that is elevated above the reach of injury; that sits above the clouds, in a calm and quiet ether, and with a brave indifference hears the rolling thunders grumble and burst under his feet.
The only elevation of a human being consists in the exercise, growth, energy of the higher principles and powers of his soul. A bird may be shot upwards to the skies by a foreign force; but it rises, in the true sense of the word, only when it spreads its own wings and soars by its own living power.
I who cannot be fit into universes upon universes, fit into the heart of the sincere believer.
Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.
True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm, and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.
Better than worshipping gods is obedience to the laws of righteousness.
I know that for the right practice of it (the presence of the Lord) the heart must be empty of all other things, because God will possess the heart alone, and as He cannot possess it alone without emptying it of all besides, so neither can he act there, and do in it what he pleases, unless it be left vacant to Him.
I am defeated all the time, yet to victory I am born.
If all the trees on earth were pens, and if there were seven oceans full of ink, they would not suffice to describe the wonders of the Almighty.
There is apart from mere intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is called education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifariousness, this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettledness, we call the world.
A soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. Of such soul-sight and root-centre for the mind mere optimism explains only the surface.
A new principle is an inexhaustible source of new views.
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
Man stands in strict connection with a higher fact never yet manifested. There is power over and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications… This open channel to the highest life is the first and last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet so tenacious, that although I have never expressed the truth, and although I have never heard the expression of it from any other, I know that the whole truth is here for me.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within. Whatever we do to the well, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
Who dares to say that he alone has found the truth?
If you walk toward Him, He comes to you running.
From this kind of knowledge arises the most perfect satisfaction and contentment.
The kingdom of heaven is within.
The mirror is thoroughly egoless and mindless. If a flower comes it reflects a flower, if a bird comes it reflects a bird. It shows a beautiful object as beautiful, an ugly object as ugly. Everything is revealed as it is. There is no discriminating mind or self-consciousness on the part of the mirror. If something comes, the mirror reflects. If it disappears, the mirror just lets it disappear… no traces of anything are left behind. Such non-attachment, the state of no-mind, or the truly free working of a mirror is compared here to the pure and lucid wisdom of Buddha.
