All dependence on another is futile, for what others can give others will take away. Only what is your own at the start will remain your own in the end. Accept no guidance but from within, and even then sift out all memories for they will mislead you. Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come. You are never left without knowing what your next step should be. The trouble is that you may shirk it. The Guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience and success. But only what you discover through your own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you. Remember, nothing you perceive is your own. Nothing of value can come to you from outside; it is only your own feeling and understanding that are relevant and revealing. Words, heard or read, will only create images in your mind, but you are not a mental image. You are the power of perception and action behind and beyond the image.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

[I am That - Chapter 98]

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Never try to be a guide, stay a mere disciple.
To guide others is only an obstacle on the way.

~ Rumi

To know is not to demonstrate or explain. It is to enter into the vision.

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The truth is lived, not taught.

~ Hermann Hesse

For thousands of years, myths and legends have existed - a
popular wisdom, a camouflaged truth, a reality that kept us in
balance with the cosmos. As a result, our education was more
effective and not like it is nowadays, via books which fill
our brains but only our brains. So it is that the personality is
limited and rebellious, always constituting the real obstacle
to our advancement.

~ Nina Soncco

The work of the spiritual teacher is like the work of Cupid. The work of Cupid is to bring two souls together; and so is the work of the spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and God. But what is taught to the one who seeks after truth? Nothing is taught. He is only shown how he should learn from God. For no man can ever teach spirituality; it is God alone who teaches it.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

To expound and propagate concepts is simple,
to drop all concepts is difficult and rare.
~ Nisargadatta

The mark of wisdom
is to discern the truth
from whatever source
it is heard.

~ Thiruvallavar

"The Tao cannot be sought from others;
it is attained in oneself.
If you abandon yourself
to seek from others,
you are far from the Tao."
- Huainan-tzi

Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.

~ William Butler Yeats

You don't have to be a "person of influence" to be influential.
In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably
not even aware of the things they've taught me.

~ Scott Adams

The greatest help or service you can do to the world is the imparting of knowledge of the Self. Spiritual help is the highest help you can render to mankind. The root cause of human sufferings is ignorance. If you can remove this ignorance in man, then only can he be eternally happy. That sage who tries to remove the ignorance is the highest benefactor in the world.

~ Swami Sivananda

The work of the spiritual teacher is like the work of Cupid. The work of Cupid is to bring two souls together; and so is the work of the spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and God. But what is taught to the one who seeks after truth? Nothing is taught. He is only shown how he should learn from God. For no man can ever teach spirituality; it is God alone who
teaches it.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

The difficulty in the spiritual path is always what comes from ourselves. A person does not like to be a pupil, he likes to be a teacher. If one only knew that the greatness and perfection of the great ones who have come from time to time to this world was in their being pupils and not in teaching! The greater the teacher, the better pupil he was. He learned from everyone, the great and the lowly, the wise and the foolish, the old and the young. He learned from their lives, and studied human nature in all its aspects.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan