Browse by: Quotation Source | Entire Living Book | The Search | The Sacred
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!
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.
All may do what has by man been done.
When we are doing nothing in particular, it is then we are living through all our being… Will is suspended, but nature and time are always active, and if our life is no longer our work, the work goes on nonetheless. With us, without us, or in spite of us, our existence travels through its appointed phases.
I see, hear and know simultaneously, and learn what I know as if in a moment. But what I do not see, I do not know, for I am not learned.
Do you never look at yourself when you criticize another person?
O, what men dare do! What men may do!
What men daily do, not knowing what they do!
He who knows how glory shines, yet loves disgrace and is not poled by it, he becomes like a spacious valley to which all men come from beneath the sky.
We are not ourselves.
Truth does not hurt. Rather, it is our resistance to its message that causes pain.
The Man Watching
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always.
There is only one thing for which God sent me into this world and that is to perfect my nature in all sorts of virtue and strength, and there is no thing that I cannot use for that purpose.
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so them, for this is the law and the prophets.
An individual drop can be merged with the ocean, and still remain meaningful. He has found his “place.”
God related to Catherine of Siena: “Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you will have beatitude within your grasp. You are she who is not, and I am He who is.”
Let not your heart be troubled.
If the mind is happy, not only the body but the whole world will be happy. So one must find out how to become happy oneself. Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.
How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?
Who has hired you as a nurse to this sick society?