He who looks without, dreams; he who looks within, awakes.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.' Say not, ' I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met the soul walking upon my path.' For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This 'outgrowing', as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person's horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.
We do not mature through age. We mature in awareness.
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves...At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer.
The cure for pain is in the pain.
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Nothing is as bad as it seems. Nothing. There is a benefit and a blessing hidden in the folds of every experience and every outcome. That includes every and any 'bad' thing that may be happening to you right now. Change your perspective. Know that nothing happens ever that is not for your highest good. All that needs to change for you to see this...is your definition of 'Highest Good.'
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
A spiritual life means: It is now or never.
I've learned that asking ourselves not just what we want to be, but who we want to be is important at every stage of our lives, not just when we're starting out in the world. That's because in a way, we're starting out fresh in the world every single day.
To successfully open the door to heightened awareness, we must open it inward.
Learn to love the questions themselves.
Only changed people can change the world. Start with yourself.
You can't have a physical transformation until you have a spiritual transformation.
In our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.
Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.
Success is about having. Excellence is about Being!
