Consequences are unpitying.
The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.
He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.
It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
It is by the goodness of God that we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
A good scare is worth more than good advice.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement.
The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
A bargain is something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist.
To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions.What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.
They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
