Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed With seeds ofjasmine, lilies, and myrtle; and when they Grow above me and thrive on my body's element they will Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space.
When you have solved all the mysteries of life you long for death, for it is but another mystery of life.
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.
You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.
Many are the places of worship, but few indeed are those who worship in Spirit and in truth.
All you have shall some day be given. Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.
In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain... When you are joyous look deep into your heart and you will find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond.
Whoever would be a teacher of men let him begin by teaching himself before teaching others; and let him teach by example before teaching by word. For he who teaches himself and rectifies his own ways is more deserving of respect and reverence than he who would teach others and rectify their ways.
The saint and the sinner are twin brothers...one was born but the moment before the other.
God has bestowed upon you intelligence and knowledge. Do not extinguish the lamp of Divine Grace and do not let the candle of wisdom die out in the darkness of lust and error. For a wise man approaches with his torch to light up the path of mankind.
Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?
When God created Man, he gave him Music as a language different from all other languages. And early man sang his glory in the wilderness; and drew the hearts of kings and moved them from their thrones.
If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
Enthusiasm is a volcano on whose top never grows the grass of hesitation.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Longer Version:
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself, Love possesses not nor would it be possessed: For love is sufficient unto love.
There is no secret in the mystery of life stronger and more beautiful than that attachment which converts the silence of a virgin's spirit into a perpetual awareness that makes a person forget the past, for it kindles fiercely in the heart the sweet and overwhelming hope of the coming future.
The first thought of God was an angel. The first word of God was a man.
Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought or emotion inside a man. Every thing we see today, made by past generations, was, before its appearance, a thought in the mind of a man or an impulse in the heart of a woman.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness, for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
I once heard a learned man say, Every evil has its remedy, except folly. To reprimand an obstinate fool or to preach to a dolt is like writing upon the water. Christ healed the blind, the halt, the palsied, and the leprous. But the fool He could not cure.
The wolves prey upon the lambs in the darkness of the night, but the blood stains remain upon the stones in the valley until the dawn comes, and the sun reveals the crime to all.
Wailing and lamentation befit those who stand before the throne of life and depart without leaving in its hands a drop of the sweat of their brows or the blood of their hearts.
You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house. And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.
It has been said that next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling.
God created music as a common language for all men. It inspires the poets, the composers and the architects. It lures us to search our souls for the meaning of the mysteries described in ancient books.
The only time a juggler Appeals to me Is when I see him Miss the ball.
The things which the child loves remain in the domain of the heart until old age. The most beautiful thing in life is that our souls remain hovering over the places where we once enjoyed ourselves. I am one of those who remembers those places regardless of distance or time.
Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.
Love passes by us, robed in meekness; but we flee from her in fear, or hide in the darkness; or else pursue her, to do evil in her name.
Yea, death and prison we mete out To small offenders of the laws, While honor, wealth, and full respect On greater pirates we bestow. To steal a flower we call mean. To rob a field is chivalry; Who kills the body he must die, Who kills the spirit he goes free.
Let ignorance reproduce itself until it is weary of its own offspring.
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves. His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.
Some who are too scrupulous to steal your possessions nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts.
I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of the multitude. And I would not have the tears that sadness makes to flow from my every part turn into laughter. I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.
Longer Version:
I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes; nor would I be content with converting my tears, invited by my agonized self, into calm. It is my fervent hope that my whole life on this earth will ever be tears and laughter. Tears that purify my heart and reveal to me the secret of life and its mystery, Laughter that brings me closer to my fellow men; Tears with which I join the broken-hearted, Laugher that symbolizes joy over my very existence.
Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return... Forget not that I shall come back to you... A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Men would bless you or curse you;
The curse, a protest against failure,
The blessing, a hymn of the hunter
Who comes back from the hills
With provision for his mate.
Because the soul is like a flower that folds its petals when dark comes, and breathes not its fragrance into the phantoms of the night.
My yearning is my cup, my burning thirst is my drink, and my solitude is my intoxication; I do not and shall not quench my thirst. But in this burning that is never extinguished is a joy that never wanes.
In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of people's wrath.
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear -- a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.
Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness.
Happiness is a myth we seek,
If manifested surely irks;
Like river speeding to the plain,
On its arrival slows and murks.
For man is happy only in
His aspiration to the heights;
When he attains his goal, he cools
And longs for other distant flights.
Virtue tested: Have I not survived hunger and thirst, suffering, and mockery for the sake of the truth which heaven has awakened in my heart?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
Longer Version:
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons, And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, but rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
Remember that Divinity is the true self of Man. It cannot be sold for gold; neither can it be heaped up as are the riches of the world today. The rich man has cast off his Divinity, and has clung to his gold. And the young today have forsaken their Divinity and pursue self-indulgence and pleasure.
Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.
Reason is not like the goods sold in the market places -- the more plentiful they are, the less they are worth. Reason's worth waxes with her abundance. But were she sold in the market, it is only the wise man who would understand her true value.
Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.
If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning.
If you would behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Longer Version:
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife, let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?