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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!
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.
In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to its real value, but to the value our fancies set upon it.
The heart is like a musical instrument of many strings, in which all the chords need to be played in harmony.
There are varying degrees of spiritual illumination, which accounts both for the varying outlooks to be found among mystics and for the different kinds of glimpses among aspirants. All illuminations and all glimpses free the man from his negative qualities and base nature, but in the latter case only temporarily. He is able as a result, to see into his higher nature. In the first degree, it is as if a window covered with dirt were cleaned enough to reveal a beautiful garden outside it. He is still subject to the activity of thinking, the emotion of joy, and the discrimination between X and Y.
In the next and higher degree, it is as if the window were still more cleaned so that still more beauty is revealed beyond it. Here there are no thoughts to intervene between the seer and the seen. In the third degree, it is as if the window were thoroughly cleaned. Here there is no longer even a rapturous emotion but only a balanced happiness, a steady tranquility which, being beyond the intellect, cannot properly be described by the intellect.
I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.
The majority of men are, as it were, suspended in the air, like toy balloons; every breath of wind moves them.
Man is never deceived; he deceives himself.
A light heart lives long.
We know what we are, but not what we may be.
Observe yourselves.
I have said that people are rendered sociable by their inability to endure solitude, that is to say, their own society. They become sick of themselves. Their mind is wanting in flexibility; it has no movement of its own, so they try to give it some — by drink, for instance… They are always looking for some form of excitement, of the strongest kind they can bear — the excitement of being with people of like nature with themselves; and if they fail in this, their mind sinks by its own weight, and they fall into grievous lethargy.
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.
Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.