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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.
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.
Lovers do not themselves seek and yearn. In all the world there is no one seeking but He!
You are not surprised at the force of the storm, you have seen it growing…
Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins…
Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have.
Let us not ask, “Why was I placed in this body?” or “Why was I not made an angel?” Does not God show partiality? Do we not have free will? All these questions simply multiple vanity. How can the creature say to the Creator, “Why did you make me like this?” or how can a creature answer back to God? Let all these kinds of discussions cease. Instead, let those discussions prevail which guide us towards virtue and knowledge. All that is present in this age of shadows is called vanity and shadows, and all that belongs to this life will be covered with the darkness, becoming obsolete upon departing this life.
The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.
If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity… you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge — a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it should be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral.
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we desire to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness or generosity or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence.
I applaud your devotion to philosophy, I rejoice to hear that your spirit has set sail, like the returning Ulysses, for its native land — that glorious, that only real country — the world of unseen truth.
Why are you attached to any one book, or to the words and ways of one saint when he himself tells you to let them go and walk in simplicity? To hang on to him as if to make a method of him is to contradict him and to go in the opposite direction to the one in which he would have you travel.
The most powerful prayer, one well-nigh omnipotent and the worthiest work of all, is the outcome of a quiet mind. The quieter it is the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs or worries, which, free from ties and all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God, and dead as to its own.
Ring the bell that still can ring.
Forget the perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
