Great Throughts Treasury

"All creatures seek after unity; all multiplicity struggles toward it - the universal aim of all life is always this unity. All that flows outward is a flow backward into its source - God."

"If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine. "

"You have within you many strong and cruel enemies to overcome. You must know that there are still a thousand ties which you must break. No one can tell you what they are; only you can tell by looking at yourself and into your heart. "

"Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying. "

"In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen! "

"In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature. "