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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!
True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
It is an extraordinary fact and an extraordinary piece of evidence for the truth of religion, that a person’s long hours spent in silent communication with God, who never directly answers, is nevertheless manifestly a two-way communication. Such a person is gradually and permanently altered in the depths of his personality in ways which would be inconceivable if there was really nothing there at all.
Even a man’s exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is mimicry, and not the nightingale.
If men who do not understand life would only approach nearer to the phantoms which alarm them, and would examine them, they would see that they are only phantoms, and not realities.
As the light increases, we see ourselves to be worse than we thought. We are amazed at our former blindness as we see issuing forth from the depths of our heart a whole swarm of shameful feelings, like filthy reptiles crawling from a hidden cave. We never could have believed that we had harbored such things, and we stand aghast as we watch them gradually appear. But while our faults diminish, the light by which we see them waxes brighter, and we are filled with horror. Bear in mind, for your comfort, that we only perceive our malady when the cure begins.
No thought which I have ever had has satisfied my soul.
The musicality of being holds both unending joy and infinite sorrow
It is the delicate touch of longing for the infinite
It is the tears of pain in the eyes of the worshiper
It is the sacrifice, at last rewarded
With a crown of roses, or thorns.
It holds the mystery of all beings who strive without knowledge
The infinite cycles of meaningless pain
The cares and woes of a thousand lives
Can one look at them, and listen without pity?
I touch them, I call them unto me
Those of little faith, and of great
Those who cry forever and those that laugh hysterically
The poor, the maimed, the lacking, the unhappy
The many parts each person must play.
I call them unto me, and I say:
Take all, take all, take everything and more
Your unhappiness is unbounded, take from me
And be at peace.
They scream, they cry, their tears are unending
The many forms of misery which all beings are heir to
Haunt me in the night.
There are beings of joy, of wonder, of enjoyment
There are sensual heavens, and pleasure-filled paradises
Yet where may those who suffer and grieve go
Those for whom the illusion of separateness
Is the truest reality?
Ropes and coils of evil deceptions
Locks and bars and endless loneliness
Before joy comes sorrow, before knowledge, pain
Before the thrill of enlightenment
Am I, who aid the wounded.
I share their grief, I hold them in my arms
I shed my tears, that they may realize they are not alone
In the vast depths of the infinite universe
There is one who cares.
You can depend upon no man, upon no friend, but on him who depends upon himself. Only he who acts beneficially towards himself will act so towards others.
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.
If the world goes against truth, then Athanasius goes against the world.
A man that has no virtue in himself, ever envies virtue in others, for men’s minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others’ evil, and who lacks the one will prey upon the other.
The evil done by man falls upon his own head, without making any change in the system of the world.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.
When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power. We shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune. It is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we set upon ourselves.
Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.
Who is more deluded than he who is careless of his own welfare?
The worst kind of shame is being ashamed of frugality or poverty.
Why do the people behave so unreasonably? Because, from long continued deception, they no longer see the connection between their bondage and their own share in the deeds of violence. And why don’t they see this connection? For the same reason which lies at the root of all human misery — because they have no faith, and without faith men can only be guided by their own interests, and a man guided by his own interest, cannot be anything but a deceiver or a dupe.
