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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!
You are not a prophet, but go humbly on the way of the prophets, and you can arrive where they are. Don’t try to steer the boat. Don’t open a shop by yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God’s mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, and if you do speak, ask for explanations.
Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.
I am as free as Nature first made man, ere the base laws of servitude began.
Talkative people listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil surrounding those who do not know the meaning of silence is that they hear nothing.
We take less pains to be happy than to appear so.
We are not cast away, not separate.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgement as anger.
It is very necessary that a man should be appraised early in life that it is a masquerade in which he finds himself, for otherwise, there are many things which he will fail to understand.
(If people changed inwardly) They would be different, richer, and higher, but would not at all be discontinued. What would be destroyed is whatever is false in them, while whatever is true in them would blossom and grow stronger.
To live rightly in this world we must first become aware of it. The problem is a man’s false assumption that he is already aware, which leaves him no motive for investigation. Do not assume that the only existing world is that presented by the five senses and the surface mind.
Ignorance is the root of misfortune.
How can he remember well his ignorance, which his growth requires, who has so often to use his knowledge?
You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pastures. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Whoever you are, who read these lines, think about your position and your duties, not upon your position as landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, clergyman, priest, or soldier, which temporarily call you, nor of the imaginary duties which these positions impose upon you, but think about your real and eternal condition as a human being.
Thou that has given so much to me, give one thing more: a grateful heart. Not thankful when it please me, as if thy blessings had spare days. But such a heart whose pulse may be thy praise.
You and I are the same. What I have done is surely possible for all. You are the Self now and can never be anything else. Throw your worries to the wind, turn within and find peace.
Cast away your opinion and you are saved. Who hinders you from casting it away?
We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.
What is the true test of character, unless it be its progressive development in the bustle and turmoil, in the action and reaction of daily life?