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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.
That our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works, but in doing that for God’s sake which we commonly do for our own.
Always do your duty, but without attachment to it. That is how a man reaches ultimate truth — by working without anxiety about results.
I have earnestly endeavoured not to laugh at human actions, nor to lament them, but to understand them.
The tempest threatens before it rises upon us; buildings creak before they fall to pieces.
Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate… We must keep silent as much as possible, and talk with ourselves only of God, whom we know to be true, and thus we convince ourselves of the truth.
They said to him, “Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you.” He said to them, “You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine this moment.”
There is an old simile in India that if you place a cup of milk before a Raja Hamsa (swan) with plenty of water in it, he will take all the milk and leave the water. In that way we should take what is of value in knowledge, and leave the dross.
He truly engages in battle who endeavours to surmount all the difficulties and errors which prevent him from reaching the knowledge of truth.
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
In deepest solitude
I found the narrow way,
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering,
rising above all science.
I feel that all I know and all I teach, will do nothing for my own soul, if I spend my time, as most people do, in business or company, even the best company. My soul starves to death in the best company; and God is often lost in prayers and ordinances. “Enter into thy chamber,” said He, “and shut thy door about thee!” Some words in Scripture are very emphatical. “Shut thy door” means much: it means — shut out, not only nonsense, but business — not only the company abroad, but the company at home: It means — let thy poor soul have a little rest and refreshment; and God have opportunity to speak to thee in a small still voice, or He will speak in thunder.
If we desert the true for the pleasant, we shall lose both the pleasant and the true. But if we desert the pleasant for the true, the peace of truth will soothe away our sorrow. If we barter the higher for the lower, emptiness and anguish will overtake us, and then, having abandoned the Eternal, where is our rock of refuge? But if we yield up the lower for the higher, the strength and satisfaction of the higher will remain with us, fullness of joy will overtake us, and we shall find in truth a rock of refuge from the evils and sorrows of life.
Each man in his perception of truth is like a traveller who walks by aid of a lantern whose light is cast before him: he does not see what as yet has not been revealed by the beams, he does not see the path he has left behind… but at any given step he sees that which the lantern reveals, and he is always at liberty to choose one side of the road or the other.
O God, deliver me from the multitude of words within my own soul.
Life-victory arrives by desiring spiritual answers more than you desire exterior results.
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
If you bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will save you. If you fail to bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will kill you.
Thought is parent of the deed.
Thinking about sense objects
Will attach you to sense objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination;
Lose discrimination, and you miss life’s
only purpose.
Practice not doing and everything will fall into place.
All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
If you wish to maintain a will conformable to nature, you have every security, every facility, you have no troubles. If you wish to maintain what is in your own power and is naturally free, and if you are content with these, what else do you care for? For who is the master of such things? Who can take them away? If you choose to be modest and faithful, who shall not allow you to be so?
Before making that unkind remark, taste it yourself before you dish it out.
Every man has within himself a continent of undiscovered character.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
