And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

~ John Milton

Do not try to keep quiet, do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about being quiet, miserable about being happy.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

For whoever seeks God in some special way,
will gain the way and lose God who is hidden in the way.
But whoever seeks God without any special way,
finds Him as He really is...He is Life itself.

~ Meister Eckhart

Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.

~ Teilhard de Chardin

So many things which once had distressed or revolted him — the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move — all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.

~ Teilhard de Chardin

The world’s ways are mysterious. There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not able to see this now. Time will reveal it. Be Patient.

~ Swami Sivananda

All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.

~ Frank Herbert

Symbols endure when their meaning is lost.

~ Frank Herbert

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

~ Frank Herbert

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

~ Frank Herbert

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

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Taking no theoretical position, not committed to any beliefs, not wearing any labels, not putting himself in any categories, the philosophical student starts his search for truth in intellectual freedom and ends it in personal inner freedom. He is then what he is.

~ Paul Brunton

A little thinking may incline the mind toward atheism, but greatness of study brings the mind back again to God.

~ Francis Bacon

All I can say is "I am", all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The sense "I am" is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, Reality or by any other name. The "I am" is in the world but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.

~ Nisargadatta

When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."

~ Diogenes Laertius

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.

~ Thomas Paine

Too late I came to you, O beauty both so ancient and so fresh, too late I came to love you. And behold, you were within me and I was out of myself, and there I was searching for you.

~ St Augustine

Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost.

~ Nisargadatta

We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

~ Nisargadatta

You are the truth
from foot to brow.
Now, what else
would you like to know?

~ Rumi

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

~ Emerson

What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

The feeling, 'I am He', is not wholesome. A man who entertains such an idea, while looking on his body as the Self, causes himself great harm. He cannot go forward in spiritual life; he drags himself down. He deceives himself as well as others. He cannot understand his own state of mind.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

Integrity has no need of rules.

~ Albert Camus

Sit on the summit of a thousand mountains without leaving the crossroads.

~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

Whatever is contrary to the Tao will not last long.

~ Lao Tzu

Mind can know only that which is of the same nature as itself, namely, thought.

~ Paul Brunton

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.

~ Alan Watts

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Possessing much knowledge is like having a thousand foot fishing line with a hook, but the fish is always an inch beyond the hook.

~ Zen Proverb

Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

~ Zen Proverb

Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw yourself from them.

~ Zen Proverb

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

~ Dogen

When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much.

~ Fen-Yang

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.

~ Walter Kaufmann

In controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

~ Buddha

There are many standing at the door, but those who are alone will enter the bridal suite.

~ Jesus

[The Gospel of Thomas]

Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

~ Jesus

[The Gospel of Thomas]

This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero!

~ Swami Sivananda