If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divin ...

Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us

The essential quality of naturalness is the sincerity of the undivided mind which does not dither between alternatives.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he becomes a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.

What aims at reality is better than what aims at appearance. We may define what aims at appearance as what a man will not choose if nobody is to know of his having it. What a man wants to 𝙗𝙚 is better than what a man wants to 𝙨𝙚𝙚𝙢, for in aiming at that he is aiming more at reality.

I try to persuade you, whether younger or older, to give less priority, and devote less zeal, to the care of your bodies or of your money than to the care of your soul and trying to make it as good as it can be. What I say to you is this It's not from money that excellence comes, but from excellence money and the other things, all of them, come to be good for human beings, whether in private or in public life

A single fact in isolation is the primary myth required for finite thought, that is to say, for thought unable to embrace totality. This mythological character arises because there is no such fact. Connectedness is of the essence of all things of all types. It is of the essence of types, that they be connected. Abstraction from connectedness involves the omission of an essential factor in the fact considered. No fact is merely itself.

When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence 'I think', I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who thinks, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego', and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking ...

The discipline of suffering, of 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 suffering - know ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul - has it not been bestowed through ...

There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy. The whole organism and each one of its parts are working in conjunction for the same purpose . . . the great principle extends to the extremest part, and from the extremest part it returns to the great principle, to the one nature, being and not-being.

If you want to shed afflictions, you should observe contentment. The state of contentment is the abode of prosperity and happiness, peace and tranquility. Those who are content may sleep on the ground and still consider it comfortable; those who are not content would be dissatisfied even in heaven. Those who are not content are always caught up in sensual desires; they are pitied by those who are content.

If you have wisdom, you will have no greedy attachment. Always examine yourselves and do not allow any heedlessness. Then you will be able to attain liberation from ego and things. True wisdom is a secure ship to cross the sea of aging, sickness and death. It is also a bright lamp in the darkness of ignorance, good medicine for all the ailing, a sharp axe to fell the trees of afflictions. Therefore you should use the wisdom of learning, thinking, and application and increase it yourself. If an ...

After the initial basis of a rational life, with a civilized language, has been laid, all productive thought has proceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises. In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.

A new idea introduces a new alternative, and we are not less indebted to a thinker when we adopt the alternative which he discarded. Philosophy never reverts to its old position after the shock of a great philosopher.

Do not worry that you have no official position. Worry about not having the qualifications to deserve a position. Do not worry that others do not know you. Seek to be worthy of being known.

When you meet a worthy person, think how you could become his equal. When you meet an unworthy person, turn inward and examine your own conduct.

Ego formation can only proceed by way of distinction from the non-ego and consciousness only emerges where it detaches itself from what is unconscious; and the individual only arrives at individuation when he marks himself off from the anonymous collective.

The hero is the archetypal forerunner of mankind in general. His fate is the pattern in accordance with which the masses of humanity must live, and always have lived, however haltingly and distantly; and however short of the ideal man they have fallen, the stages of the hero myth have become constituent elements in the personal development of every individual.

The magical effect of the rite is factual enough, and in no sense illusory. Moreover, it actually works out, just as primitive man supposes, in his hunting successes; only the effect does not proceed via the object but via the subject. The magical rite, like all magic and indeed every higher intention, including those of religion, acts upon the subject who practices the magic or the religion, by altering and enhancing his own ability to act.

The discovery of the objective, external world is a secondary phenomenon, the result of human consciousness endeavouring, with infinite labour and the help of the instruments and abstractions of modern science, to grasp the object as such, independently of the primary reality of man, which is the reality of the psyche. But early man relates himself above all to this primary reality of psychic dominants, archetypes, primordial images, instincts, and patterns of behaviour. This reality is the ob ...

I'd be floating with the swans on that smooth surface between the darkness below and the pale tender sky above. Floating at the same time on that other surface between here and far away, between then and now. Floating, on the surface between the real and the imagined, between what comes to us from the outside and what comes to us from within, from deep, deep down in here. Floating like a white bird on the water. Floating on a great river of life - a great smooth silent river that flows so ...

One touches and, in the act of touching, one's touched. Complete communication, but nothing communicated. Just an exchange of life, that's all.

All the objects of the outside and inside worlds are introjected as contents of consciousness and are there represented according to their value. The selection, arrangement, gradation, and delimitation of the contents so represented depend in large measure on the cultural canon within which consciousness develops and by which it is conditioned. But it is characteristic of every individual, under all circumstances, to create for himself a consciously constellated and synthetically constructed v ...

Ego consciousness, poised between the outer and inner world of objects and driven to unceasing acts of introjection, is by virtue of its registering and balancing functions ever compelled to keep its distance, until it finally reaches a point where it becomes detached even from itself. This produces a kind of self-relativization which, as skepticism, humor, irony, and a sense of one's own relativity, promotes a higher form of psychic objectivity.

During this process ego consciousne ...

All symbols and archetypes are projections of the formative side of human nature that creates order and assigns meaning. Hence, symbols and symbolic figures are the dominants of every civilization, early or late. They are the cocoon of meaning which humanity spins round itself, and all studies and interpretations of culture are the study and interpretation of archetypes and their symbols.

The possessed character of our financial, industrial and political leaders, is psychologically evident from the very fact that they are at the mercy of a suprapersonal factor - work, power, money, or whatever they like to call it - which, in the telling phrase, consumes them and leaves them little or no room as private persons. Coupled with a nihilistic attitude towards civilization and humanity there goes a puffing up of the ego-sphere which expresses itself with b ...

The drying up of imagination and of creative ability, which the child naturally possesses in high degree, is one of the typical symptoms of impoverishment that growing up entails. A steady loss of the vitality of feeling and of spontaneous reactions in the interests of sensibleness and good behaviour is the operative factor in the conduct now demanded of the child in relation to the collective. Increase in efficiency at the cost of depth and intensity is the hallmark of this proc ...

The development of the persona is the outcome of a process of adaptation that suppresses all individually significant features and potentialities, disguising and repressing them in favour of collective factors, or those deemed desirable by the collective. Here again, wholeness is exchanged for a workable and successful sham personality. The inner voice is stifled by the growth of a superego, of conscience, the representative of collective values. The voice, the individual experience of ...

Though neither science, nor art, nor politics itself interested him, he firmly held the same views on all these subjects as the majority and his newspaper did, and changed them only when the majority did, or, rather, he did not change them, but they themselves changed imperceptibly in him. He chose neither his tendency nor his views, but these tendencies and views came to him themselves, just as he did not choose the shape of a hat or a frock coat, but bought those that were in fashion.

'Woman, you see, it's such a subject that, however much you study her, there'll always be something new.'
'Better not to study then.'
'No. Some mathematician said that the pleasure lies not in discovering the truth, but in searching for it.'

Pity for her, and repentance at having wished for her death, and above all the very joy of forgiveness, made it so that he suddenly felt not only relief from his suffering but also an inner peace that he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that had once been the source of his suffering had become the source of his spiritual joy, that what had seemed insoluble when he condemned, reproached and hated, became simple and clear when he forgave and loved.

I'll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fall in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray - but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as ...

Paradoxical as it may seem, it is, for very many persons, much easier to behave selflessly in time of crisis than it is when life is taking its normal course in undisturbed tranquility. When the going is easy, there is nothing to make us forget our precious selfness, nothing to distract our minds from the distractions with which we have chosen to be identified; we are at perfect liberty to wallow in our personality to our heart's content. And how we wallow! It is for this reason that all t ...

The distinguishing marks of the highest form of love are disinterestedness, tranquility and humility. Where there is disinterestedness there is neither greed for personal advantage nor fear for personal loss or punishment; where there is tranquility, there is neither craving nor aversion, but a steady will to conform to the divine Tao or Logos on every level of existence and a steady awareness of the divine Suchness and what should be one's own relations to it; and where there is humility ...

A truly Godlike love which, like the sun, shines equally upon the just and the unjust, is impossible to a mind imprisoned in private preferences and aversions.

Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma or immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language, man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively and hopefully in the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts ...

Right belief is the first branch of the Buddhists' Eightfold Path leading to deliverance; the root and primal cause of bondage is wrong belief, or ignorance - an ignorance, let us remember, which is never completely invincible, but always, in the last analysis, a matter of will. If we don't know, it is because we find it more convenient not to know. Original ignorance is the same thing as original sin.

So whole-hearted is the modern faith in technological idols that (despite all the lessons of mechanized warfare) it is impossible to discover in the popular thinking of our time any trace of the ancient and profoundly realistic doctrine of 𝘩𝘶𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘴 and inevitable 𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴. There is a very general belief that, where gadgets are concerned, we can get something for nothing - can enjoy all the advantages of an elaborate, top-heavy and constantly advancing technology without having to pay for them by ...

This is, or should be, the guiding principle of all social reform - to organize the economic, political and social relationships between human beings in such a way that there shall be, for any given individual or group within the society, a minimum of temptations to covetousness, pride, cruelty and lust for power. Men and women being what they are, it is only by reducing the number and intensity of temptations that human societies can be, in some measure at least, delivered from evil.

Some of those who use spiritual exercises make progress in the life of the spirit; others, using the same exercises, make no progress. To believe that their use either constitutes enlightenment, or guarantees it, is mere idolatry and superstition. To neglect them altogether, to refuse to find out weather and in what way they can help in the achievement of our final end, is nothing but self-opinionatedness and stubborn obscurantism.

If thou shouldst say, 'It is enough, I have reached perfection', all is lost. For it is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

Of the significant and pleasurable experiences of life only the simplest are open indiscriminately to all. The rest cannot be had except by those who have undergone a suitable training. One must be trained even to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol and tobacco; first whiskies seem revolting, first pipes turn even the strongest of boyish stomachs. Similarly first Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless, first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the na ...

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

The datum which is called 'God' and is formulated as 'the highest good' signifies, as the term itself shows, the supreme psychic value. In other words it is a concept upon which is conferred, or is actually endowed with, the highest and most general significance in determining our thoughts and actions. In the language of analytical psychology, the God-concept coincides with the particular ideational complex which, in accordance with the foregoing definition, concentrates in its ...

For everyone whose guiding principle is adaptation to external reality, imagination is something reprehensible and useless. And yet we know that every good idea and all creative work are the offspring of the imagination, and have their source in what one is pleased to call infantile fantasy. Not the artist alone, but every creative individual whatsoever owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy. The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it ...

From the psychological point of view demons are nothing other than intruders from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of unconscious complexes into the continuity of the conscious process. Complexes are comparable to demons which fitfully harass our thoughts and actions; hence in antiquity and the Middle Ages acute neurotic disturbances were conceived as possession. Thus, when the individual consistently takes his stand on one side, the unconscious ranges itself on the other and rebels. He ...

Earth-bound desire, sensuality in all its forms, attachment to the lures of this world, and the incessant dissipation of psychic energy in the world's prodigal variety, are the main obstacle to the development of a coherent and purposive attitude.

A symbol loses its magical or, if you prefer, its redeeming power as soon as its liability to dissolve is recognized. To be effective, a symbol must be by its very nature unassailable. It must be the best possible expression of the prevailing world-view, an unsurpassed container of meaning; it must also be sufficiently remote from comprehension to resist all attempts of the critical intellect to break it down; and finally, its aesthetic form must appeal so convincingly to our feelings that no ...

The detachment of libido from the object transfers it into the subject, where it activates the images lying dormant in the unconscious. These images are archaic forms of expression which become symbols, and these appear in their turn as equivalents of the devalued objects. This process is as old as mankind, for symbols may be found among the relics of prehistoric man as well as among the most primitive human types living today. Symbol-formation, therefore, must obviously be an extremely import ...

Where love is, power cannot prevail, and where power prevails, love cannot reign.

The feeling of bliss accompanies all those moments when one feels borne along by the current of life, when what was dammed up can flow off without restraint, when there is no need to do this thing or that thing with a conscious effort in order to find a way out or to achieve a result. We have all known situations or moods when things go of themselves, when we no longer need to manufacture all sorts of wearisome conditions for our joy or pleasure. The time of childhood is the unforgettab ...

A man's hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

A man's unconscious makes a far stronger impression on an observer than his consciousness does, and his actions are of considerably higher importance than his rational intentions.

One of the greatest errors of our civilization is the superstitious belief in verbal statements, the boundless overestimation of instruction by means of words and methods. A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but do they really imagine he is educated by it? Actually, it is the parents' lives that educate the child - what they add by word and gesture at best serves only to confuse him. The same holds good for the teacher. But we have such a beli ...

Identity is primarily an unconscious conformity with objects. It is not an 𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, but an 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘪 likeness which was never the object of consciousness. Identity is responsible for the naive assumption that the psychology of one man is like that of another, that the same motives occur everywhere, that what is agreeable to me must obviously be pleasurable for others, that what I find immoral must also be immoral for them, and so on. It is also responsible for the almost universal desire to co ...

Many people from the educated classes have to move in two totally different milieus - the domestic circle and the world of affairs. These two totally different environments demand two totally different attitudes, which, depending on the degree of the ego's 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 with the attitude of the moment, produce a duplication of character. In accordance with social conditions and requirements, the social character is oriented on the one hand by the expectations and demands of society, and ...

I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

I became aware of my true nature - it was an entity within myself, an entity whose feelings were balanced and calm. Between the intense highs and lows, I came to recognize this entity as the part of myself that was liked and respected, only this part would appear and disappear, like the wind on an autumn day. The balanced part of myself offered a feeling of ease and relaxation but, as soon as I tried to grasp it, it was swept away by painful memories, followed by those of lust and the desire f ...

It is not greed that destroys the greedy but their lack of concern for the nature of such lust.

It occurred to me that memories were like dreams; that the nature of a memory and the nature of a dream was the same. They were both visions in imagination. The dream and the memory were both mental images, the difference being that the dream was a series of passing images while the memory was an image solidified. What then was truly a dream? It was sleeping. It was daydreaming. But moreover, if indeed dreams were a result of images passing through the mind, then life itself was a dream, a wak ...

I suddenly saw that every time in my life that I had cursed something, I had spread the poison of that curse. Sometimes I had hurt others with it and always, unknowingly, I had hurt myself. Perhaps in my ignorance, I hadn't recognized the pain I inflicted on others or why I suddenly met with difficulties and injury, but the truth was that I was responsible. My curses had moved out in a circle, affecting others and returning to me in disguise.

Accidents and misfortune are reflections of a person's attention. The quality of one's attention is the determining factor of the outcome. A person who holds his attention on negative thoughts will draw circumstances to himself according to the intensity of his thoughts.

Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.

Our conceptions always require a sense-content to work with, and as the words 'soul', 'God', 'immortality' cover no distinctive sense-content whatsoever, it follows that theoretically speaking they are words devoid of any significance. Yet strangely enough they have a definite meaning 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦. We can act 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘧 there were a God; feel 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘧 we were free; consider Nature 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘧 she were full of special designs; lay plans 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘧 we were to be immortal; and we find th ...

In many persons, happiness is congenital and irreclaimable. 'Cosmic emotion' inevitably takes in them the form of enthusiasm and freedom. I speak not only of those who are animally happy. I mean those who, when unhappiness is offered or proposed to them, positively refuse to feel it, as if it were something mean and wrong. We find such persons in any age, passionately flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness of life, in spite of the hardships of their own condition, and in ...

We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; and the slaughter-houses and indecencies without end on which our life is founded are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer and cleaner and better than the world that really is.

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What is less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves ...

There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zigzags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibilities, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanours and mistakes.

If it is possible to get rid of anger and worry, why is it necessary to have them at all?

To enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for anything.
To know all things, learn to know nothing.
To possess all things, resolve to possess nothing.
To be all things, be willing to be nothing.

If there were no one prompt to help a brother first, and find out afterwards weather he were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity for the wronger's person; no one ready to be duped many a time rather than live always on suspicion; no one glad to treat individuals passionately and impulsively rather than by general rules of prudence; the world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to live in.

Perfect conduct is a relation between three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recipients of the action. In order that conduct should be abstractly perfect, all three terms, intention, execution and reception, should be suited for one another. The best intention will fail if it is either work by false means or address itself to the wrong recipient.

Pain and wrong and death must be fairly met and overcome in higher excitement, or else their sting remains essentially unbroken. If one has ever taken the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this world's history fairly into his mind - freezing, drowning, entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men, and hideous diseases - he can with difficulty continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that he may all the while not be really inside the game, that he may lack the gr ...

In heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever. Inferior to ourselves in this or that way, if yet we cling to life, and he is able 'to fling it away like a flower' as caring nothing for it, we ...

What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which infested it, there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May not voluntarily accepted poverty be 'the strenuous ...

No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. One of us must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must yield a point, another must stand firm - in order the better to defend the position assigned him. Each attitude being a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of u ...

No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.

The practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and ...

If this room is full of darkness for thousands of years, and you come in and begin to weep and wail 'Oh, the darkness', will the darkness vanish? Bring the light in, strike a match, and light comes in a moment. So what good will it do you to think all your lives 'Oh, I have done evil, I have made many mistakes'? It requires no ghost to tell us that. Bring in the light, and the evil goes in a moment. Strengthen the real nature, build up yourselves, the effulgent, the resplendent ...

That unsharable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny as he privately feels it rolling out on fortune's wheel may be disparaged for its egotism, may be sneered at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of our concrete actuality, and any would-be existent that should lack such a feeling, or its analogue, would be a piece of reality only half made up.

Our life has a boundary but there is no boundary to knowledge.

We can point to the wood that has been burned, but when the fire has passed on, we cannot know where it has gone.

There are many who have caused trouble but who think that they do not deserve punishment. However, those who do not cause trouble and who think they deserve nothing are few indeed. To know what is beyond your ability to change, and to live with this as your destiny, is the action of a virtuous one.

I saw some piglets trying to suckle from their dead mother. After a while they got up and left her. She did not seem to notice them and so they no longer felt any affinity with her. What they loved about their mother was not her body but what gave life to the body. When a man is killed in battle, at his burial his battle honours are of little use to him. A man without feet has little love for shoes. With so much attention being paid to caring for the body, imagine what care should be given to ...

Perfect balance is found in still waters. Such water should be an example to us all. Inner harmony is protected and nothing external affects it. Virtue is the result of true balance. Virtue has no shape or form yet nothing can be without it.

Only the true man has understanding. So what is a true man? The true man of old did not fight against poverty, nor did he look for fulfilment through riches - for he had no grand plans. Therefore, he never regretted any failure, nor exulted in success. He could scale the heights without fear, plumb the depths without difficulties and go through fire without pain. This is the kind of person whose understanding has lifted him up towards the Tao.

The true man of old slept without dreaming ...

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? - fated or free? - material or spiritual? - here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather th ...

'Truth' in our ideas and beliefs means the same thing that it means in science. It means 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑠 (𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒) 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑜 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑢𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒, to summarize them and get about among them by conceptual shortcuts instead of following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously f ...

If there be any life that it is really better we should lead, and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it would be really 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑢𝑠 to believe in that idea, 𝑢𝑛𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠, 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑑, 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑓 𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑡𝑠.

I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him.

If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labour passes quickly, but the good endures; If you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.

Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself.

The world is big enough to satisfy everyone's needs, but it will always be too small to satisfy an individual's greed.

Our knowledge of how to act in the world remains eternally incomplete - partly because of our profound ignorance of the vast unknown, partly because of our wilful blindness, and partly because the world continues, in its entropic manner, to transform itself unexpectedly.

It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness. When you are tightly boxed in or cornered - all too often by your own stubborn and fixed adherence to some unconsciously worshiped assumptions - all there is to help you is what you have not yet learned. It is necessary and helpful to be, and in some ways to remain, a beginner. No one unwilling to be a foolish beginner can learn. It is necessary even for the most accompl ...

Aim at something. Pick the best target you can currently conceptualize. Stumble towards it. Notice your errors and misconceptions along the way, face them, and correct them. Get your story straight. Past, present, future - they all matter. You need to map your path. You need to know where you were, so that you do not repeat the mistakes of the past. You need to know where you are, or you will not be able to draw a line from your starting point to your destination. You need to know where you ar ...

A naive person trusts because he or she believes that people are essentially or even universally trustworthy. But any person who has truly lived has been, or has, betrayed. Someone with experience knows that people are capable of deception and willing to deceive. That knowledge brings with it an arguably justified pessimism about human nature, personal and otherwise, but it also opens the door to another kind of faith in humanity: one based on courage, rather than naivete. I will trust you, I ...

While philosophy is but a tale told, myth and ritual are reality lived and enacted. Philosophy explains the phenomena of life to the rational mind, but myth and ritual represent the reemergence of the primordial reality that created the phenomena that philosophy wishes to explain. Thus, while philosophy attempts to answer the question why? myth and ritual reply to the question whence?. Depth psychology teaches us that disciplines like philosophy and ethics can at best only addres ...

Valentinus's premise is that both the world and humanity are sick. The sickness of both has a common root: ignorance. That is, we ignore the authentic values of life and substitute inauthentic ones for them. We believe that we need physical things such as money, symbols of powers and prestige, physical pleasures in order to be happy or whole. Similarly, we fall in love with the ideas and abstractions of our minds. Our rigidities are always due to excessive attachment to abstract concepts a ...

People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last member of a dying species with arrows, they like to think that the boogeyman entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.

So long as people do not consider all men as their brothers and do not consider human life as the most sacred thing, which rather than destroy they must consider it their first and foremost duty to support; that is so long as people do not behave towards one another in a religious manner, they will always ruin one another's lives for the sake of personal gain.

(Fortunate people often) forget that all the privileges of their position are accidental and that not everyone can have a thousand wives and palaces as Solomon did; that for every man with a thousand wives there are a thousand men without wives, and that for every palace there are a thousand men who built it by the sweat of their brow, and that the same chance that has made you Solomon today might make you Solomon's slave tomorrow.

Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers were given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death. This means that only in faith can we find the meaning and possibility of life. I realized that the essential meaning of faith lies not only in the 'manifestation of things unseen', or in revelation (being only a description of one of the signs of faith) ...

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

It is better to be alone with one's books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don't know how to continue the conversation.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this ...

The truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping.

The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the comprehension of men's arithmetical understanding.

If we help someone in the hope of getting something in return,
this is not giving but lending.
True giving is done without expecting anything in return.
It also means we relinquish control over what we have given.

Technology is not going to save us. Our computers, tools, machines are not enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being.

The virtues of the past are the vices of today. And many of what were thought to be the vices of the past are the necessities of today.