Great Throughts Treasury

"Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them."

"Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!"

"Oh, I know today: nothing in the world is the human conflict more than to go the way which leads him to himself!"

"Oh! He thought breathing deeply Siddhartha now I do not want any more to let it go! Enough! start thinking and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world! Enough! kill me and, to find a secret behind the ruins! It will never be the Yoga-Veda to instruct, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any doctrine. By my own I want to go to school, I want to know, I want to unravel the mystery that has the name Siddhartha."

"Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding, Joseph exclaimed. If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn?t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine? The Master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht?I can see they have already begun."

"Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure."

"Oh, it's hard to find a trace of God in the midst of life as we lead, in the midst of so satisfied, so extremely civil of time, without any spirit, with a view to this kind of architecture, these jobs and these people."

"Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?"

"Om is the bow, the arrow is soul,"

"On no morning of his life had he ever been in good spirits nor done any good before midday, nor ever had a happy idea, nor devised any pleasure for himself or others. By degrees during the afternoon he warmed and became alive, and only towards evening, on his good days, was he productive, active and, sometimes, aglow with joy."

"On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion. He was a feared gambler, few dared to take him on, so high and audacious were his stakes. He played the game due to a pain of his heart, losing and wasting his wretched money in the game brought him an angry joy, in no other way he could demonstrate his disdain for wealth, the merchants' false god, more clearly and more mockingly."

"On growing old, one becomes more contented than in one's youth, which I will not therefore revile, for in all my dreams I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter."

"On one part of the footpath where a thin trickle of water from a small spring kept it damp, I found ... a swarm of ... small, blue butterflies drinking the water... I only went that way on sunny days and each time the dense, blue swarm was there, and each time it was a holiday."

"Once a man takes an honesty as his ideal, he cannot confine himself to the pleasant and reasonable side of his nature."

"Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret."

"Once he said to her: 'You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it."

"Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again."

"Once he traveled to a village to purchase a large rice harvest, but when he arrived the rice had already been sold to another tradesman. Nevertheless, Siddhartha remained in this village for several days; he arranged a feast for the peasants, distributed copper coins among their children, helped celebrate a marriage, and returned from his trip in the best of spirits."

"Once, he said to her: You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it."

"Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk."

"One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen."

"One can pass on knowledge but not wisdom. One can find wisdom, one can live it, one can be supported by it, one can work wonders with it, but one cannot speak it or teach it."

"One cannot apologize for something fundamental, and a child feels and knows this as well and as deeply as any sage."

"One can acquire money, fame and distinction, but one cannot create happiness or unhappiness, not for oneself or for others. One can only accept what comes, although one can, to be sure, accept it in entirely different ways."

"One does not reach his house, never. But where roads intersect with the harmonious whole world looks like a house, if for a short time"

"One cannot talk about the music, but with the spirit of the known world."

"One has to be able to sequence into exactly the same like the tortoise."

"One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old... and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening."

"One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time."

"One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error."

"One of the disadvantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency to see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless."

"Only when I found myself sitting in front of you did I realize that my wish was only half fulfilled and that my sole aim was to sit next to you."

"One thing, however, did become clear to him?why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing?mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery."

"Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long."

"One teacher, for ten to students in the classroom, in a clever students excel. Indeed, he is right, because it is not his job to foster a spirit of intelligence and talent."

"Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think."

"Only the weak are put on paths without peril."

"Only time separates man from all yearning."

"Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them."

"Our brother was led by his ordeal in despair, and despair is the result of any serious attempt to understand and justify human life. Despair is the result of any serious effort to put his life in harmony with virtue, with justice, with reason, while meeting its own demands. children live in deca this despair, adults beyond."

"Our days are precious but we gladly see them going if in their place we find a thing more precious growing: a rare, exotic plant, our gardener's heart delighting; a child whom we are teaching, a booklet we are writing."

"Our eyes, above all those misused, overstrained eyes of modern man, can be, if only we are willing, an inexhaustible source of pleasure. When I walk to work in the morning I see many workers who have just crawled sleepily out of bed, hurrying in both directions, shivering along the streets. Most of them walk fast and keep their eyes on the pavement, or at most on the clothes and faces of the passers-by. Heads up, dear friends!"

"Our goal is not to turn us to one another, but to get to know one another and learn to see the other and to respect what he is: our opposite and our completion."

"Our friendship has no other purpose, no other reason, than to show you how utterly unlike me you are."

"Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing...eternity...it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity...The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity...It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for...And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness."

"Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world."

"Our ways of enjoying ourselves are hardly less irritating and nerve-racking than the pressure of our work. ?As much as possible, as fast as possible? is the motto. And so there is more and more entertainment and less and less joy? This morbid pursuit of enjoyment [is] spurred on by constant dissatisfaction and yet perpetually satiated."

"Our thinking is a permanent abstraction; return the gaze of the senses, an attempt to build a purely spiritual world. But you just fall in love with what is mutable and mortal world and proclaim the very meaning of what is ephemeral. You do not look away from these temporal things, you give yourself and them by giving them your gains supreme value, become equal with eternity. We thinkers, trying to get closer to God being the world's dropping. You approach Him by loving creation and creating it again. And one, and other works are human and imperfect, but art is innocent."

"Out of this moment when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more himself than before, firmer in his resolve."

"Out of the awareness of sameness grew the desire for differentiation."