The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.
Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.
You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be a failure.
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
One who has loved truly can never lose entirely.
It's prudent to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. But don't forget that your soul sticks to you if you stick to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.
If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.
For what matters if I gain the whole world, but lose my soul?
For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?
A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.
When you win, you often lose, that's just a fact. There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart.
What hurts the soul? To live without tasting the water of its own essence.
We can be eaten by techniques and forget what we have inside of us.
One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.
To buy happiness is to sell soul.
For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried.
There’s a difference between losing something you knew you had and losing something you discovered you had. One is a disappointment. The other feels like losing a piece of yourself.
The losses of the natural world are our loss, their silence silences something within the human mind.
They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?
