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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!
Take another example: a room full of guests in full dress, being received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, it is a rabble — even if they all wear stars. Really good society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always, at bottom, a sense of emptiness prevalent. A false tone is there.
Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and independence.
The individual fears ridicule above all things, and ridicule is the certain result of originality. No one, therefore, wishes to make a party of his own; everyone wishes to be on the side of all the world.
I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first.
When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is good for others is dangerous.
Each has his own fancies, opposed to his true good.
It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with man. If he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.
To be nothing is the precondition of being.
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason.
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences, and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
He is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God.
One who rejects instruction is the foe of his own soul.
Self-will is so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.
O, that men’s ears should be
To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!
Who keeps one thing in view makes all things serve.
The exterior man may be undergoing trials, but the interior man is quite free.
