Browse by: Quotation Source | Entire Living Book | The Seeker | The Sacred
Share in the accounts and discoveries of the many individuals who, just like you, set out to find new, true answers that could stand up to the test of passing time with its ever-changing conditions. Welcome these inward and uplifting thoughts as if they were your own, for in one sense… they are.
Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends, finally, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness.
The true sovereign of the world, who moulds the world like soft wax, according to his pleasure, is he who lovingly sees into the world.
A happy life consists in a mind which is free, upright, undaunted and steadfast, beyond the influence of fear or desire.
It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.
Philosophy is the art of living.
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.
The right feeling is, “How strange this is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true.”
Leave all things to take their natural course and do not interfere.
Come, let us go into the body of that light. Let us live in the cleanliness of that song. Let us throw off the pieces of the world like clothing and enter naked into wisdom. For this is what all hearts pray for when they cry, “Thy will be done.”
It is not necessary to go off on a tour of great cathedrals in order to find the Deity. Look within. You have to sit still to do it.
Always run in the short way, and the short way is the natural. Accordingly, say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble and warfare and all artificiality.
When it’s easier to do evil, but you choose to do good, you are a true hero.
A hundred thousand tongues may discourse to you about the sweetness of honey, but you can never have knowledge of it except by taste.
There is a remedy for every wrong and a satisfaction for every soul.
Saint Augustine cries, “Lord I cannot love you, but come in and love yourself in me.” According to Saint Paul, we must put off our own natural form and put on the form of God, and Saint Augustine tells us to discard our own mode of nature. Then the divine nature will flow in and be revealed. Saint Augustine says, “Those who seek and find, find not. He who seeks and finds not, he alone finds.” Saint Paul says, “What I was, was not I, it was God in me.”
The virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarcely worth the sentinel.
Where there is plenty of light there is strong shadow.
I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
He who does not have attention in himself and does not regard his mind, cannot become pure in heart, and so cannot see God. He who does not have attention in himself cannot be poor in spirit, cannot be contrite, nor be gentle and meek, nor hunger and thirst after righteousness, nor be merciful, nor a peacemaker, nor suffer persecution for righteousness sake.
But ’tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.
“Has the road an end or not?” He answered: “The road has an end, but the stations have no end, for the journey is twofold, one to God and one in God.”
False spiritual work keeps you comfortable. Real spiritual work makes you uneasy.
The decrease of the general cause of suffering — illusion — is the only pleasant work which lies before a man, and gives him that true happiness in which his life consists.
Where there is much pretense, much has been borrowed — nature never pretends.
