Unless you want a horrible surprise, never go bird watching with an open mouth.
The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
Take away from love the fullness of self surrender, the completeness of personal commitment, and what remains will be a total denial and negation of it.
Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.
There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it.
I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la sagesse est le but principal de la vie et c'est pourquoi je reviens toujours aux stoïciens. Ils ont atteint la sagesse, on ne peut donc plus les appeler des philosophes au sens propre du terme. De mon point de vue, la sagesse est le terme naturel de la philosophie, sa fin dans les deux sens du mot. Une philosophie finit en sagesse et par là même disparaît.
Understanding the true nature of things, or seeing things as they really are, is the ground of wisdom.
…one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half…
A wise man, once he is past fifty, does not befuddle his senses with strong drink, nor make violent love in the cool spring night, nor dance on his hands.
At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, ‘Come down to the water.’ It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look, I see fire: that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
The testimony of the greatest humans who have ever lived is that the way to make the most of ourselves is by transcending ourselves. We must learn to move beyond self-centeredness to make room within ourselves for others. When you transcend yourself, the fact will be confirmed by the quality of your life. We will attain – even if only momentarily – a transparency and a radiance of being which results from living both within and beyond yourself. This is the promise and the excitement of self-understanding.
Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hésitation l'altère, la moindre lourder le dépare, la moindre sottise l'abêtit.
Peace can be found within, no matter the external circumstances.
One of the best ways to support the development of patience is to cultivate happiness with yourself.
من ذا الذى يستطيع أن يفصح عن مكنون نفسه بمجرد الكلمات
Patience is supported & nurtured by a quality of forgiveness.
With infinite wisdom and care your life is constantly sustained because Nature flows through you.
In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts. They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds—which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air—the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance. All of this combined to furnish ample matter for reflection to the contemplating youth.
