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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!
Those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.
The Almighty created the angels and conferred reason upon them, and He created the beasts and conferred passion upon them, and He created man and conferred reason and passion both upon him. He whose reason prevails over his passion is higher than the angels, and he whose passion prevails over his reason is lower than the beasts.
Beast, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Progress is the law of life; man is not man as yet.
I have a body on which other bodies act, and which acts reciprocally upon them. This reciprocal action is certain; but my will is independent of my senses. I can either consent to, or resist their impressions. I am either vanquished or victor, and can perceive clearly within myself when I act according to my will, and when I submit to be governed by my passions. I always have the power to will.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Like the monist I plunge into the all-inclusive One. But the one is so perfect that as it receives me and I lose myself in it, I can find in it the ultimate perfection of my own individuality.
He who would be master of himself shall win it, if he bravely strives.
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
When the mountain disappears as a necessity to climb, the mountain climber disappears as a necessity to exist.
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so them, for this is the law and the prophets.
One doth not know how much an ill word may empoison liking.
There is no greater punishment of evil than that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
There are false heroes and false devotees; and as true heroes never are the ones who make much noise about their deeds of honor, just so true devotees, whom we should follow, are not the ones who make so much vain show. What! Will you find no difference between hypocrisy and genuine devotion?
Reward? Do you seek any greater reward for being a good man than doing what is right and just?… Does it seem you a small and worthless thing to be a good man, and therefore a happy man?
If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. It is in your power to erase this judgment now. If anything in your own nature gives you pain, who hinders you from correcting your opinion?
Rich, only to be wretched, thy great fortunes
Are made thy chief afflictions.
The greatest part of mankind, nay, of all Christians, may be said to be asleep. That particular way of life, which takes up each man’s mind, thoughts and actions, may be very well called his particular dream. The learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, are all in the same state of slumber, passing away a short life in a different kind of dream.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.