Great Throughts Treasury

"The less life in a person, the more he will try to live off your life."

"The low world tells you what to do; the high world tells you what to learn. And when you learn you won't want to do anything that the world tells you to do any more."

"The man who needs to be accepted by others still lives under several wrong impressions. He still thinks there is value in self-pleasing human associations and in reassuring words which come from people who appear self-assured. He still thinks he can escape the agony of his own emptiness by filling it with the neurotic noise of society. The awakened man has no attachment to the opposite terms of acceptance and rejection. Living above mere words, he comes and goes among people in a quiet contentment which is unknown by those who still seek acceptance."

"The mercy we need is self-mercy, which consists of ceasing to behave badly while justifying it."

"The need to impress others causes half the world's woes. Don't add to them. Be real, not impressive."

"The most marvelous experience of life is to transform life according to reality, not imagination."

"The more a man neglects his own life the more he will be compelled to wrongly involve himself in the lives of others. This accounts for the neurotic reformer, the busybody, the general troublemaker. Being self-deceived he will always credit himself with noble motives. This is a good example of the wrong use of natural energy."

"The only difference in sleeping people is the way they snore."

"The only activities of true value are those which aim at inner transformation."

"The noble aim supplies the practical how."

"The next time you feel pushed around by life, ask who is the pusher and who is the pushed?"

"The only thing I need is freedom from myself."

"The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable - when lived in fully - of destroying forever every past mistake and regret."

"The only way you’re going to have a good relationship with anyone is to have a good relationship with yourself."

"The only reason you do not do great things is because you timidly cling to small things. Will you let loose of small things and bear the uncertainty of having nothing for a while? Do this and eventually you will do great things."

"The reason a man must awaken is because it is dangerous to sleep, as man's present life proves."

"The ring of truth is inside every man. And this is not something merely metaphysical or philosophical. It is a practical fact. If a man learns to listen, if he refuses to be lured away by false sounds, he will find his way home. The ring of truth will always be recognized by the man who listens. And every man has the capacity to listen and follow."

"The rules of Truth are your friends. They are enemies to what is your enemy."

"The power of fantasy is so strong that people think they are having a good time when they are merely wasting money."

"The real prize is never delivered by memory or by imagination, but by something above them."

"The other person has a right to his own life and you have no right to demand that he give it to your neurosis."

"The whole problem is to get an unaware person to see that he is unaware, which is not easy. How can he see what he will not see? But there are ways, and one of them is to listen to the lesson of suffering. But even this lesson is resisted, for people love their pains in preference to reality. This is because they have not as yet tasted freedom. An animal accustomed to the confining comforts of his cage will fear the open spaces, and will snap at whoever tries to force him out."

"The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them."

"The single most important thing is for you to persist in spite of everything."

"The truly practical person is the one who is trying to understand and end his inner warfare."

"The truth inspires because it connects what is real in you with what is real in the universe."

"The wise person replaces toys with medicines."

"There are three stages that a person on the path passes through: 1. I know what I want. 2. I don’t know what I want. 3. I really know what I want."

"There exists a special self which takes every event as if it were the very thing you wanted to happen. That self is the Supermind which is never upset by anything. Your goal is to nourish it into greater strength. Then, every step is sunlit."

"The two shallow substitutes which people unconsciously take as happiness are activity and acquisition."

"The world says, ‘How little can I give — how much can I gain.’"

"There is no natural need to be bad."

"There is a way out of the human problem and anyone can find it."

"There is only one tyrant in life, which is a lack of understanding of life."

"There is no one in the entire world who condemns you. You yourself are the only person who condemns you - and pointlessly. In reality, there is no condemnation whatever, but, as long as you think there is, you ache. Not only that, but a man dwelling with the illusion of self-condemnation is compulsively driven to do things that increase the illusion. There is no man, nor god, nor past experience to condemn you. You are free and you are free right now. Will you try to see this?"

"There is no danger whatsoever in not knowing your psychological future, in not knowing what will happen to you. The only danger is in insistently predicting what it should be, for sooner or later your desire will smash itself to pieces against the wall of reality. To prevent this, never protect yourself against the next moment."

"Think about it. How would a man's day be different if he did not try to force his way through it? By not forcing anything he would avoid the tension and strife that always accompanies forcing. Forcing falls away when we clearly see it as a wrong move. We need only be conscious that anything gained by either subtle or violent force becomes just another chain."

"Think of this one important sentence and reflect on it often: TOO MUCH OF ME IN MY LIFE."

"Think for days about the following thought: Hostility serves no natural need."

"'There is something wrong inside of me.' Stop right there. Stop right there until the responsibility is so fixed there is no way you can get out of it. You've trapped yourself and that is a marvelous thing to do because when you do that you have taken a certain amount of the right responsibility for facing a problem where it exists, inside yourself."

"Those who imagine they understand themselves do not want to hear anything that scares their imagination."

"Thoughts go out and seek what is identical to them."

"To be like the light we must be in the light."

"To change what you get you must change who you are"

"To win real rewards, we must firmly decline the deceptive rewards offered by society."

"To drop the false self is to drop painful emotions."

"To understand life, all you need to do is study what comes your way. See it and let revelation come to you."

"To place the universe on your side means: To be aware of cosmic forces already with you, which need to be awakened, revealed, put to practical use. To realize that the placing of these forces on your own side is the same as putting yourself on your own side, for a mind divided against itself cannot stand. To admit to a power above our own humanness, which we refuses to do whenever we meet events with resistance, instead of understanding."

"To make it to heaven on earth, you have to be able to recognize a bad state the moment Satan sends it to you."

"True bliss is to have absolutely no future at all."