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Here you will read the innermost thoughts and feelings of inspired seekers who have gone before you. Some names you may know… others you will be glad to meet!
We are troubled only by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves.
That thou art.
Few people are more often in the wrong than those who cannot bear to be wrong.
Of a certainty, the man who can see all creatures in himself, himself in all creatures, knows no sorrow.
Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.
The social impulse does not rest directly upon the love of people, but upon the fear of solitude. It is not just the charm of having the company of others that people seek; it is the dreary oppression of being alone — the monotony of their own consciousness — that they would avoid. They will do anything to escape it, even put up with bad companions, and tolerate the feeling of restraint which all society involves, which is very burdensome.
With a large number of people, it is quite evident that their power of sight wholly predominates over their power of thought; they seem to be conscious of their existence only when they are making a noise.
There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.
I’ve never had a sorrow that one hour’s reading wouldn’t allay.
Conversion is no repairing of the old building; but it takes all down, and erects a new structure… Conversion is a deep work, a heart-work; it turns all upside down, and makes a man be in a new world. It goes throughout with men — throughout the mind, throughout the members, throughout the motions of the whole life.
Ambition becomes displeasing once it is satisfied; there is a reaction. Our spirit endlessly aims towards some object, then falls back on itself, having nothing else on which to rest, and having reached the summit, it longs to descend.
This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.
Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them?
A man is best off if he is thrown upon his own resources, and can be all in all to himself, and Cicero goes so far as to say that a man who is in this condition cannot fail to be very happy.
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice that which we are for what we could become.
What you do when you don’t have to determines what you will be, when you can no longer help it.
My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.
You must have patience. He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time.
The characteristic of a philosopher is that he looks to himself for all help or harm. The marks of a proficient are that he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no one, says nothing concerning himself as being anybody, or knowing anything. When he is in any instance hindered or restrained he accepts this as his own responsibility. If he is praised, he smiles to himself at the person who praises him. If he is censured, he makes no defense. But he goes about with the caution of a convalescent, wary of anything that may suggest he is well. He restrains desire; he transfers his aversion to those things only which thwart the proper use of his own will; he employs his energies moderately in all directions; if he appears stupid or ignorant, he does not care; in a word, he keeps watch over himself as over an enemy and one in ambush.
While they dream, they do not know that they are dreaming.
