Thomas Carlyle Quotes

Anything by D. H. Lawrence or Jean Genet - 'Zen Mind,' 'Beginner's Mind' is my daily go to for non-fiction.

The essence of life, I concluded, did not lie in the material. It penetrated, but was not bound to, the physical world of science.

Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very well; that is the book you want to study while you are living. There is but one such book in the world.

We are only an instant, that's true. But we are eternal.

Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.-Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain

A woman's body is the gate to this life. A man's body is the gate to the next life.

Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.

Reality lies far beyond space and time, and I need to know why.

He who has lived a day has lived an age.

The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or wonder or sorrow than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now.

Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?

My ancestors were Brahmins. They spent their lives in search of god. I am spending my life in search of man.

Molecules dissolve and pass away, but consciousness survives the death of the matter on which it rides.

When did the lemons learn the same creed as the sun?

All illusion comes and goes, but the soul remains unchanged.

Its as if you think you'd never find Reason and the Sacred intertwined

Life without Freedom is like a body without a soul, and Freedom without Thought is like a confused spirit. . . . Life, Freedom and Thought are three-in-one, and are everlasting and shall never pass away.

If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.

The world is illusory, Only Brahman is real, Brahman is the world

The Method is Judeo-Christian: if you go through pain, you can't miss. Rubbish. I'm more interested in the box itself than what's in it. How vs why.

The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a person to exist without a religion than without a heart.

Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.