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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!
Remember that it is not the man who gives blows or abuse who offends you, but the view you take of these things as being offensive. When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.
It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.
When he tries to extend his power over objects
Those objects gain control of him.
He who is controlled by objects
Loses possession of his inner self.
If he no longer values himself,
How can he value others?
If he no longer values others,
He is abandoned.
He has nothing left.
He raises the afflicted from a dunghill,
For he will settle him with the Rulers of the people.
A person can be said to have grown up on the day he does not need to be lied to about anything.
Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,
Where wav’ring man, betray’d by vent’rous pride
To tread the dreary paths without a guide,
As treach’rous phantoms in the mist delude,
Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good.
How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,
Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice,
How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress’d,
When vengeance listens to the fool’s request.
Fate wings with ev’ry wish th’ afflictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art,
With fatal heat impetuous courage glows,
With fatal sweetness elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the speaker’s pow’rful breath,
And restless fire precipitates on death.
Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784), Excerpted from The Vanity of Human Wishes
Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them.
Drink from your own cistern, and make use of your own resources. You are not merely watering the earth but enlightening human souls.
It is in your power to be free from all compulsions, and to remain in the greatest tranquillity of mind, even if all the world cries out against you as much as it chooses.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind is man.
A mind that is completely discontented can jump into reality — not a mind that is content, not a mind that is respectable, hedged about by beliefs.
The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave comes to the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? Mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us seek the cause rather in ourselves than elsewhere. It is the action of an uninstructed person to lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others; of a partly instructed person to lay the fault on himself; and of one perfectly instructed neither on others nor on himself.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss[ess];
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason.
We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves. Fear, desire, and hope are always pushing us towards the future.
Liberty is of more value than any gifts, and to receive gifts from men is to lose it. Be assured that men most commonly seek to oblige you only that they may engage you to serve them.
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.
