Great Throughts Treasury

"Everything you do in life will leave a mark."

"Everything you ever experienced or will experience is in the here and now. The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don?t betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don?t imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword."

"Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey."

"Evidently this safety is completely false; no one can control anything, and a change always appears at the moment one least expects it, taking us surprise and with no chance to react or fight."

"Evil had to manifest itself and fulfill its role, so that ultimately Good could prevail... Evil needs to manifest itself, for them to understand the value of Good."

"Everything, absolutely everything on this earth makes sense, and even the smallest things are worthy of our consideration."

"Evil would never bring Good, however much they wanted to believe that it would. By the time they discovered the truth, it would be too late."

"Exactly. This time I?m not going to tell you a story. I?ll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It?s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that?s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don?t understand the language they speak there."

"Exactly as you imagine. They remain tied to us through the feeling of bitterness. That is why Jesus said: before going to the temple, go back and forgive your brother. One must be forever washing one?s soul with the water of forgiveness."

"Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love."

"Expecting people hurt. Forgetting is painful. But to know how to decide, is the largest of pain."

"I, like all people, see the world from the lens wants to occur as craves things, and not, as in fact occur."

"I don?t know the secret of success - but the secret of failure is to always try to follow the will of others."

"Experience has taught me that people only give values to things if they have, at some point, been uncertain as to whether or not they will get it."

"I love this man sitting before me now, because I do not possess him and he does not possess me. We are free in our mutual surrender; I need to repeat this dozens, hundreds, millions of times, until I finally believe my own words."

"In search of a perfect companion, the pilgrim discovers he is his own Soulmate."

"If we resist the temptation to allow other people to define who we are, then we will gradually be able to let the sun inside our own soul shine forth."

"Facing the difficulties, I can choose either to be a poor victim or a great adventurer."

"Faith as tiny as a grain of sand allows us to move mountains."

"Fairy tales had been her first experience of the magical universe, and more than once she had wondered why people ended up distancing themselves from that world, knowing the immense joy that childhood had brought to their lives."

"Faced by guilelessness, however, we grow and expand. We find courage and friendship beside those who believe in us."

"Fashion is merely a saying: I belong to your world. I'm wearing the same uniform as your army, so don't shoot."

"Fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul."

"Faith shows us that we are never alone. Transformation helps us to love the mystery."

"Fashion may renew itself every six months but one thing remains the same: bouncers always wear black."

"Fate is strange. Almost no one I know married the first love of their lives. But for those who did are always telling me that they missed something important, that they didn?t experience all that they might have."

"Fate is never unfair to anyone. We are all free to love or hate what we do."

"Fear cramps everyone's style."

"Fatima went back to her tent, and, when daylight came, she went out to do the chores she had done for years. But everything had changed. The boy was no longer at the oasis, and the oasis would never again have the same meaning it had had only yesterday. It would no longer be a place with fifty thousand palm trees and three hundred wells, where the pilgrims arrived, relieved at the end of their long journeys. From that day on, the oasis would be an empty place for her. From that day on, it was the desert that would be important. She would look to it every day, and would try to guess which star the boy was following in search of his treasure. She would have to send her kisses on the wind, hoping that the wind would touch the boy's face, and would tell him that she was alive. That she was waiting for him, a woman awaiting a courageous man in search of his treasure. From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing to her: the hope for his return."

"Fear again. If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid."

"Fear lasts only until the point at which it is an outlawed, then loses its meaning fear, and left us only hope that we have made the right decision."

"Fear exists before and after, but not while the shots are being fired, because, at that moment, you see men at their very limit, capable of the most heroic of actions and the most inhumane."

"Fatima is a woman of the desert, said the alchemist. She knows that men have to go away in order to return. And she already has her treasure: it?s you. Now she expects that you will find what it is you?re looking for."

"Fear reaches only to the point where the unavoidable begins; from there on, it loses its meaning. And all we have left is the hope that we are making the right decision."

"Fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself."

"Few people know when they should stop."

"Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don?t know, but it?s a world where there?s no time, so space, no frontiers."

"Felix has landed safely from his jump from the stratosphere? Never accept your limitations-because there are NO limitations. Viva Felix!"

"Finally there are those who saw at once that the question was a trap. There is no answer. Instead of wasting time grappling with that trap. They decide to act. They look to their childhood and look for what filled them with enthusiasm then and disregarding the advice of their elders, devote their life to it. Because enthusiasm is the sacred fire. They slowly discover, their actions are linked to a mysterious impulse beyond human knowledge. And they bow their heads as a sign of respect for that mystery and pray that they will not be diverted from a path they do not know, a path which they have chosen to travel because of the flame burning in their hearts. They use their intuition when they can and resort to discipline when intuition fails them. They seem quite mad. And sometimes they behave like mad people. But they are not mad. They have discovered true love and will. And those two things reveal the goal and the direction that they should follow. Their will is crystalline, their love is pure and their steps determined. In moments of doubt or sadness they never forget: I am an instrument, allow me to be an instrument capable of manifesting your will. They have chosen their road, and they may understand what their goal is only when they find themselves before the unwanted visitor. That is the beauty of the person who continues onward with enthusiasm and respect for the mystery of life as his only guide. His road is beautiful, and his burden light. The goal will be large or small, it can be far away or right next door. He goes in search of it with respect and honor. He knows what each step means, and how much it costs in effort and training and intuition. He focuses not just on the goal to be reached but on everything happening around him. He often has to stop because his strength fails him. At such moments, love appears and says: You think you're heading toward a specific point, but the whole justification for the goals existence lies in your love for it. Rest a little. But as soon as you can, get up and carry on. Because ever since your goal found out that you were traveling toward it, it has been running to meet you."

"Find someone who makes you smile, because it only takes a smile to make a day better"

"Follow your dreams, transform your life."

"Finally, he explained to me that suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself-free and untrammeled , guiding us with its force and driving us on."

"First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His well."

"Finding one important thing in your life doesn?t mean you have to give up all the other important things."

"Firstly, by learning the great lesson of wise men: patience, the certainty that everything - both good and bad - is provisional in this life. Secondly, using this sudden change of course to risk new things in daily life, to do things you always dreamed of."

"For a while, I'll think obsessively about her, I'll become embittered, I'll bore my friend because all I ever talk about is my wife leaving me. I'll try to justify what happened, spend days and nights reviewing every moment spent by her side, I'll conclude that she was too hard on me, even though I always tried to do my best. I'll find other women. When I walk down the street, I'll keep seeing women who could be her. I'll suffer day and night, night and day. This could take weeks, months, possibly a year or more... Until one morning, I'll wake up and find I'm thinking about something else, and then I'll know the worst is over. My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and became capable of seeing the beauty of life once more. It's happened before, it will happen again, I'm sure. When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive--I'll find love again."

"For a time in my life I stood looking at the wind, I forgot to sow, I did not live joyfully, I did not even drink the wine offered me. But, one day, I judged myself ready, and I went back to work, I told men about my visions of paradise, as did Bosch, Van Gogh, Wagner, Beethoven, Einstein, and other madmen before me."

"For as long as the logic mentor throughout my life, and I know that love is something built, rather than discover."

"For every kills what he loves, from all you hear, it makes for some views across, For a mere flattery, coward kiss a brave man with a sword!"

"For example, two people might be cooking the same meal and using exactly the same ingredients, but one is pouring Love into what he does and the other is merely trying to fill his belly. The result will be completely different, even though Love is not something that can be seen or weighed. The person making the Offering is always rewarded. The more he shares out his affection, the more his affection grows."