Whatever authority I may have rests solely on knowing how little I know.
Discipline doesn’t have to be about restriction, it can be about freedom, it can be about openness, it can be about more rather than less.
If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. I am the only real truth I know.
People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn themselves into beasts; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights.
You are a god only insofar as you recognize yourself as a man.
Inscription by which ancient Athenians
welcomed the conquering armies
of Pompey the GreatWere it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.
Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.
We may not exaggerate the future threats and dangers, but we do exaggerate the present and actual state of this global nation — underestimate the degree to which it is still surviving and accessible to those who want to experience it. It is far less nature itself that is yet in true danger than our attitude toward it.
Martyrdom . . . is the negation of any spiritual value, because martyrdom is suffering turned in on the self in glamour and glorification for what a person is going through.
Smart shopping does not involve collecting a lot of information, but a true appreciating of each individual object.
Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
Though clear waters range to the vast blue autumn sky,
How can they compare with the hazy moon on a Spring night!
Most people want to have pure clarity,
But sweep as you will, you cannot empty the mind.
It isn’t true that contemporary attitudes and values have changed. What’s true is that we’re searching desperately to change them.
Eighty per cent of life is just showing up.
