Great Throughts Treasury

"Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner."

"Nevertheless, it was almost a pleasure to suffer these torments. I wore long dragging blind and insensitive for life, and my heart had been silent so long, I impoverishing confined in a dark corner, that even those reproaches and the horror that contracted my soul were welcome. It was, finally, a feeling, a feeling that was burning and throbbing in a heart. Puzzled, I felt within my atrocious misery something like a liberation and the new spring."

"No doubt, life is always terrible. We cannot help it , however, we are responsible."

"No matter how close two human beings may be, there is always a gulf between them which only love can bridge, and that only from hour to hour."

"No matter how inflexibly the world was clamoring for war and heroism, honor and other outmoded ideals, no matter how remote and unlikely every voice that apparently spoke up for humanity sounded, all of that was merely superficial, just as the question of the external and political aims of the war remained superficial. Deep down, something was evolving. Something like a new humanity. Because I could see people, and a number of them died alongside me, who had gained the new emotional insight that hatred and rage, killing and destroying, were not linked to the specific object if that rage. But the object, just like the aims, were completely accidental. Those primal feelings, even the wildest of them, were not directed against the enemy; their bloody results were merely an outward materialization of people's inner life, the split within their souls, which desired to rage and kill, destroy and die, so that they could be reborn."

"No one had any objection when I suggested another detour shortly before reaching town. We turned on to a lovely road that ran high above the valley in a semi-circle , rich in extensive views over the valley, river and town, which, in the distance, was already aglow with rows of bright lamps and thousands of rosy lights."

"No more reality than we have inside. So most humans live so unrealiztically; because he believes that external images are reality and not allow your own inner world manifest."

"No one ever arrives home, she said amiably. But when the paths of friends meet, the whole world looks like home for a while."

"No one liked him, no one was on intimate terms with him... he was a good person but took no particular trouble to please anyone."

"No permanence is ours; we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds: through day or night, cathedral or cave we pass forever, craving form that binds."

"No use lamenting over it! I was now living in a blaze of unsatisfied desire, of suspenseful expectancy, that often made me wild and crazy. I often saw the image of my dream beloved before me with more than lifelike clarity, much more clearly than my own hand; I spoke to it, wept before it, cursed it. I called it mother and knelt before it in tears; I called it beloved and sensed its ripe, all-fulfilling kiss; I called it devil and whore, vampire and murderess. It lured me into the tenderest dreams of love and into acts of dissolute shamelessness; nothing was too good and precious for it, nothing too bad and vile."

"No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities. Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world. Many a one never becomes a human being, but remains a frog, lizard, or ant."

"No you why compare yourself with others, and if nature has created him to bat, you should not aspire to be an ostrich. Sometimes you have for too rare and reproaches follow different paths that follow the majority. Let you that. Contemplate the fire, contemplate the clouds, and as omens emerge and begin to sound in his soul voices, abandon yourself to them without asking before whether or seems right to professor, dad or a good god either."

"No road will bring us together. Don't speak like that. I'm serious. We are not meant to come together, not any more than sun and moon were meant to come together, or sea and land. We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement."

"No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine."

"No, my dear, how should I be sad? I, who have been rich and happy, have become even richer and happier now. My son has been given to me."

"No, it's no joke. I tell you only what I found. You can transfer knowledge, but not wisdom. Wisdom can be found, you live it, you may be on the support, so it can do wonders, but denounce her and teach no way. I guessed this already as a boy, and it was moved away from my teachers. I made a discovery, Govinda, which you once again for you to be a joke or a foolery, but the most valuable of my thoughts. Here are the opposite of every truth is just as true! Actually, you can still speak and dress in word only when it is a true one-sided. Everything is in the form of thought and can be expressed in words, is one-sided, is half-hearted, lacking entirely, padding, unity. When the sublime Gautama taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsaraand Nirvana, to illusion and truth, pain and liberation. Otherwise cannot be who wants to teach, there is no other way ahead. But the world itself, what is around us and in us in the middle is never one-sided. No man nor any thing should not be completely samsara or nirvana, no man is by the end of sinful nor holy. So it would seem, yes, because we succumb to the illusion that time is real. Time is not real. And if time is not real, then this distance, which seems to divide the world of eternity, suffering from luck, evil from good, is only an illusion. - How is that? - Anxiously he asked Govinda. - Listen to me, my beloved, listen to me well! Sinner like me and like you, is a sinner, but once again united to the Brahman, reached once Nirvana, will be Buddha, and now see it someday is an illusion, it is only a metaphor! In truth it is not so, that the sinner staying some way to become a Buddha, does not become him in the course of development, although our mind cannot itself otherwise imagine. No, the sinner is already today the future Buddha, his whole future has in it is contained and the sinner, in himself, in every man should worship the future, the possible, the hidden Buddha. the world, my friend, is not perfect, nor is coming slowly to perfection, no: it is perfect in every moment, every sin contains a longer grace every child bears the old man, every newborn death, everyone dying eternal life. None of the people is no data to assess how far the other had gone on his way, a brigand and the rake has been waiting for Buddha, the Brahmin waiting robber. Deep meditation allows you to stand the time, to see at once all the erstwhile life, present and future, and then everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, everything is, it seems to me good, death on a par with life, sin on a par with holiness, prudence on an equal footing with stupidity, everything must be as it is, you only need my consent, my good will, my consent, and everything is good for me, I can only support cannot hurt me. His own body and soul experienced that I need was a sin I needed was debauchery, greed, vanity, and the most terrible doubt, to learn to surrender to love the world, not to compare it with some of their ideal, imaginary world, with imaginary some a kind of perfection, just leave it as it is and to love it and enjoy it, that I belong to him. These among others are my findings, Govinda."

"No, I'm not religious, I'm sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious. No time. Does it need time to be religious? Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can't be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Od‚on Bar and all that."

"No, my friend, only one science, which is everywhere... it is present in me and you and every being. And so begin to think: this science has no other enemy than in May will swell to know, than learning."

"No, not a single person would not be able to raise such a long fiery life... No one can so long day and night to burn all your lights, wasting all of its volcanoes, no one would not be able to last as long day and night stand in flames every day for many hours with a hot head to think, always basking in constantly creating, always bright, with vigilant feelings and nerves upside Castle, behind which the windows daily music sounds, and shine with thousands of candles at night."

"Not an hour passed without my destiny perceived as unhappy and curse, it was just my suffering, my obsession with suffering, which served me as a protection and shield against the outside world."

"No, there was no teaching a truly searching person, someone who truly wanted to find, could accept. But he who had found, he could approve of any teachings, every path, every goal, there was nothing standing between him and all the other thousand any more who lived in that what is eternal, who breathed what is divine."

"Not eternal is the world of appearances, not eternal, anything but eternal are our garments and the style of our hair, our bodies themselves. I am wearing a rich man?s garments because I have been a rich man but I am no rich man anymore what i will be tomorrow I don?t know."

"Nobody really knew anything. People lived; they went here and there about the earth and rode through forests; so much seemed to challenge or to promise, and so many sights to stir our longing: an evening star, a blue harebell, a lake half-covered in green reeds, the eyes of beasts and human eyes; and always it was as though something would happen, something never seen and yet sighed for, as though a veil would be pulled back off the world; till the feeling passed, and there had been nothing."

"No, there was no power in the world in its power to convince me to test the enormous horror of another confrontation with the self, to face re other organization, embodies another, where they will remain there in the last path of peace and tranquility, but the destruction of eternity of the self for self - renewal."

"Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of average people and the traditional values and bourgeois conventions that they uphold. A personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces: the urge to create a life of one's own and the insistence by the world around us that we conform. Nobody can develop a personality unless he undergoes revolutionary experiences. The extent of those experiences differs, of course, from person to person, as does the capacity to lead a life that is truly personal and unique."

"Nothing in the world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads him to himself!"

"Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life."

"Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast."

"Nothing is caused by demons. There are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait, and fast."

"Nothing is harder yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born."

"Nothing is more hateful of borders, nothing is more stupid."

"Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."

"Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present."

"Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood, Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross."

"Nothing, said he in the mirror, I am only waiting. I am waiting for death. Where is death then? Coming, said the other."

"Novalis and Dostoyevsky, awaited me just as do the mother, or the wife, the children, maids, dogs and cats in the case of more sensible people."

"Now Siddhartha also got some idea of why he had fought this self in vain as a Brahman, as a penitent. Too much knowledge had held him back, too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rules, to much self-castigation, so much doing and striving for that goal! Full of arrogance, he had been, always the smartest, always working the most, always one step ahead of all others, always the knowing and spiritual one, always the priest or wise one. Into being a priest, into this arrogance, into this spirituality, his self had retreated, there it sat firmly and grew, while he thought he would kill it by fasting and penance. Now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right, that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation. Therefore, he had to go out into the world, lose himself to lust and power, to woman and money, had to become a merchant, a dice-gambler, a drinker, and a greedy person, until the priest and Samana in him was dead. Therefore, he had to continue bearing these ugly years, bearing the disgust, the teachings, the pointlessness of a dreary and wasted life up to the end, up to bitter despair, until Siddhartha the lustful, Siddhartha the greedy could also die. He had died, a new Siddhartha had woken up from the sleep. He would also grow old, he would also eventually have to die, mortal was Siddhartha, mortal was every physical form. But today he was young, was a child, the new Siddhartha, and was full of joy."

"Now true humor begins when a man ceases to take himself seriously."

"Now what we call bourgeois, when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up entirely to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surrender to God. The other path leads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surrender to corruption. Now it is between the two, in the middle of the road, that the bourgeois seeks to walk. He will never surrender himself either to lust or to asceticism. He will never be a martyr or agree to his own destruction. On the contrary, his ideal is not to give up but to maintain his own identity. He strives neither for the saintly nor it?s opposite. The absolute is his abhorrence. He may be ready to serve God, but not by giving up the fleshpots. He is ready to be virtuous, but likes to be easy and comfortable in this world as well. In short, his aim is to make a home for himself between two extremes in a temperate zone without violent storms and tempests; and in this he succeeds though it be at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility."

"Now and then I have expressed the opinion that every nation, and every person, would do better, instead of rocking himself to sleep with political catchwords about war-guilt, to ask himself how far his own faults and negligencies and evil tendencies are guilty of the war and all the other wrongs of the world, and that there lies the only possible means of avoiding the next war."

"Now, he thought, since all these most easily perishing things have slipped from me again, now I'm standing here under the sun again just as I have been standing here a little child, nothing is mine, I have no abilities, there is nothing I could bring about, I have learned nothing. How wondrous is this! Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feel sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this strange, foolish world."

"O how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all, but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning . . . or wise . . . and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening."

"O music! A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently, inwardly only; you steep your being in it; it takes possession of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse, and sad in you; it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light and gives wings to depressed spirits. The melody of a folk song can do that. And first of all harmony! For each harmonious chord of pure-toned notes - those of church bells, for example - fills the spirit with grace and delight, a feeling that is intensified by every additional note; and at times this can enchant the heart and make it tremble with bliss as no other sensual pleasure can."

"Of course, I do not know anything about spirits; But I live in my dreams and you have noticed. The rest of the people also live in their dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference."

"Obeying is like eating and drinking. There's nothing like it if you've been without it for too long."

"Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which house-owners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly?he is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greed?he is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around."

"Of all the conceptions of pure bliss that people and poets have dreamed of, listening to the harmony of the spheres always seemed to me the highest and most intense. That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged - to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious innate harmony. Alas, how is it that life can be so confusing and out of tune and false, how can there be lies, evil, envy and hate among people, when the shortest song and most simple piece of music preach that heaven is revealed in the purity, harmony and interplay of clearly sounded notes. And how can I upbraid people and grow angry when I myself, with all the good will in the world have been unable to make song and sweet music out of my life?"

"Of course! When it's a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humor or wit, you're the man, you tragedian. Well, I am not. I don't care a fig for all your romantics of atonement. You wanted to be executed and to have your head chopped off, you lunatic! For this imbecile ideal you would suffer death ten times over. You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live. The devil, but you shall live! It would serve you right if you were condemned to the severest of penalties."

"Of course there are a lot of people, which is easier for the life and seemingly or really are happier; there are not strong Individualized that have no problems. To compare them other has no meaning for us; we have to live our own lives, and that means something new and special, always Difficult and always nice for everyone. There is no standard for life, it provides each another, one-time task, and so there is not even an innate and predetermined unsuitability for life, but it may be the weakest and poorest live a dignified and genuine life in his place, and other be something simple in that it assumes its non-self-chosen place in life and his special task and to realize searches."