Great Throughts Treasury

"If you have no eyes, do not walk blindly; take a staff in your hand. If you have no staff of insight, do not walk without a guide."

"If you want to hold the beautiful one, hold yourself to yourself."

"If you knew yourself for even one moment, if you could just glimpse your most beautiful face, maybe you wouldn't slumber so deeply in that house of clay. Why not move into your house of joy and shine into every crevice! For you are the secret Treasure-bearer, and always have been. Didn't you know?"

"If you put on shoes that are too tight and walk out across an empty plain, you will not feel the freedom of the place unless you take off your shoes. Your shoe-constriction has you confined. At night before sleeping you take off the tight shoes, and your soul releases into a place it knows. Dreams glide deeper. Physical existence is so cramped. We grow old and bent over like embryos. Nine months passes; it is time to be born. The lamb wants to graze green daylight. There are ways of being born twice, of coming to where you fly, not individually like birds, but as the sun moves with his bride, sincerity. Loaves of bread remind us of sunlight, but when we are inside that orb, we lose interest in building ovens, in millwork and the preparation of fields before the planting. Fish love the ocean. Snakes move like earth-fish inside a mountain, well away from seawater. Certain sunfish, though, turn snakes into ocean lovers."

"If your guidance is your ego, don't rely on luck for help. you sleep during the day and the nights are short. By the time you wake up your life may be over."

"If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire."

"If your heart isn't yet illumined be awake always, be a seeker of the heart, be at war continually with your carnal soul. But if your heart is already awakened, sleep peacefully, sleep in the arms of Love. If destiny comes to help you, love will come to meet you. A life without love isn't a life"

"Ignorance is God's prison. Knowing is God's palace."

"I'm in love! Your advice, what are they? Love has poisoned me! Your remedies, what are they? I hear them shout: ‘fast, bind him feet!’ But if my heart that has gone mad! Those strings on my feet, what is the point?"

"In love, aside from sipping the wine of timelessness, nothing else exists. There is no reason for living except for giving one's life. I said, First I know you, then I die. He said, For the one who knows Me, there is no dying."

"Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death."

"In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and watch how the pattern improves. You suppose you are the trouble but you are the cure. You suppose that you are the lock on the door but you are the key that opens it. It's too bad that you want to be someone else. You don't see your own face, your own beauty. Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours. Only from the heart can you touch the sky. People of the world don't look at themselves, and so they blame one another. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

"Illumination is eternal. Now is always evolving. As there are billions of stars, there are billions of steps.As there are billions of souls, there are billions of ways to grow."

"In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal."

"In the silence between your heartbeat bides a summons. Do you hear it? Name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless, but why pretend it is not there?"

"In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances."

"In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don't run away from this dying. Whoever's not killed for love is dead meat."

"In the waters of purity, I melted like salt. Neither blasphemy, nor faith, nor conviction, nor doubt remained. In the center of my heart a star has appeared and all the seven heavens have become lost in it."

"In this mob of I's inside, which one is me? Hear me out. I know I'm wandering, but don't start putting a lid on this racket. No telling what I'll do then. Every moment I'm thrown by your story. One moment it's happy, and I'm singing. One moment it's sad, and I'm weeping. It turns bitter, and I pull away. But then you spill a little grace, and just like that, I'm all light. It's not so bad, this arrangement, actually."

"In this world of trickery emptiness is what your heart wants."

"In truth everything and everyone Is a shadow of the Beloved, and our seeking is His seeking and our words are His words... We search for Him here and there, while looking right at Him. Sitting by His side, we ask: "O Beloved, where is the Beloved?""

"Indeed envy is a defect; worse than any other."

"In your light I learn how to love. / In your beauty, how to make poems. / You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, / But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art."

"Inside the Great Mystery that is, we don't really own anything. What is this competition we feel then, before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?"

"Inside of us, there's a continual autumn. Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water."

"Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe."

"Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe."

"Infinite mercy flows continually But you're asleep and can't see it."

"Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now."

"Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe."

"Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?"

"Into my heart's night along a narrow way I groped; and lo! The light, an infinite land of day."

"Into this new love, die your way begins on the other side become the sky take an axe to the prison wall, escape walk out like someone suddenly born into color do it now"

"It is better to leave each day ago fades away, like water flowing, free from sorrow. Yesterday is gone and his story - sung. Today new seeds grow."

"It is God's kindness to terrify you in order to lead you to safety."

"It is Love and the Lover that live eternally - Don't lend your heart to anything else; all else is borrowed."

"It is love that holds everything together."

"It is certain that an atom of goodness on the path of faith is never lost."

"It was destiny the Lord. He must find where the deficiency."

"It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home."

"It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home."

"It's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul... The only real customer is God. Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish."

"Judge the moth by the beauty of the candle."

"Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move."

"Keep on knocking 'til the joy inside opens a window. Look to see who's there."

"Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue is like an arrow shot from the bow. Son, that arrow won't turn back on its way; you must damn the torrent at its source."

"Keep your intelligence white hot and your grief glistening so your life will stay fresh."

"Knock, And He'll open the door Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun. Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens. Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything."

"Knowing that conscious decisions and personal memory are much too small a place to live, every human being streams at night into the loving nowhere, or during the day, in some absorbing work."

"Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not."