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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.
The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind — the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.
Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief.
I love everything, and dislike one thing only: the desperate imprisonment of my being… Liberty for the inner man is then the strongest of my passions — perhaps my only passion.
I made four mistakes in my preliminary steps in this way: I thought that I remember Him, that I know Him, that I love Him and that I seek Him. But when I reached Him, I saw that His remembering of me preceded my remembrance of Him, that His knowledge about me preceded my knowledge of Him, that His love towards me was more ancient than my love towards Him, and that He sought me in order that I would begin to seek Him.
Don’t waste the works of the devil. Spiritual roots can grow deeper in adversity. Use the inner, raging storms. Have sight without flight or fight. Remain a seer. Nothing is too much. All storms are for growth. Remember, no exceptions!
Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues.
If you wish to grow in your spiritual life, you must not allow yourself to be caught up in the workings of the world. You must find time alone, away from the noise and confusion, away from the allure of power and wealth.
That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Speech is mightier than all fighting.
When admitting, “I just don’t know the answer,” you are doing something far more profound than you think. You place yourself at the foot of the stairs that leads upward to a world far higher than the intellect. When saying, “I just don’t know the answer,” you are coming to an end of the self-conceit and self-deceit that occupies the level of the intellect. You have qualified yourself for leaving the self-centered world and approaching the lofty universal world.
Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.
Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure, you were created for Joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.
Don’t think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice. This is egomania. Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness.
Let none of us entertain the desire for possessions, for what gain is it to acquire those things which we cannot take with us? Why not rather acquire those that we can take: prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, understanding, charity, love of the poor, faith in Christ, goodness, hospitality? If we obtain these, we shall find them there before us preparing a welcome for us in the land of the meek.
Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.
Oh, thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already within thee, here and now, couldest thou only see!
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.
“What people will say.” In these words there lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the uneven vision of our minds. These four words bear sway everywhere.
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
Sickness is not cured by saying “Medicine,” but by drinking it. So a man is not free by the name of the Eternal without discerning the Eternal.
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.
One would be apt to think, from the murmurs of impatient mortals, that God owed them a recompense before they had deserved it, and that He was obliged to reward their virtue beforehand. No, let us first be virtuous, and rest assured we shall sooner or later be happy. Let us not require the prize before we have won the victory.
