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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!
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
A fundamental teaching of Baha’u’llah is the oneness of the world of humanity. Addressing mankind, he says, “Ye are all leaves of one tree and the fruits of one branch.” By this it is meant that the world of humanity is like a tree, the nations or peoples are the different limbs or branches of that tree, and the individual human creatures are as the fruits and blossoms thereof.
Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.
Where one man shapes his life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have it shaped for them by impulse and by circumstances.
The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain, and not a reservoir. That which is filled by merely pumping in, will be emptied by pumping out.
Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking ‘I’. And each time his ‘I’ is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the same mind at the same time.
Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of roles, even that of disinterestedness.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world… and thus render me contented.
Nothing is more hidden from us than the illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
Hero-worship is strongest where there is the least regard for human freedom.
The burden which is well borne becomes light.
What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire Law. All the rest is commentary.
This is the true joy of life: being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a might one. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to others, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for them whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
Mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
Why do we follow the majority? Is it because they have more reason? No, because they have more power.
He that loves to be flattered is worthy o’ the flatterer.
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.