Great Throughts Treasury

"People under delusion accumulate tainted merits but do not tread the Path. They are under the impression that to accumulate merits and to tread the Path are one and the same thing. Though their merits for alms-giving and offerings are infinite. They do not realize that the ultimate source of sin lies in the three poisons within their own mind. They expect to expiate their sins by accumulating merit. Without knowing that felicities obtained in future lives have nothing to do with the expiation of sins. Why not get rid of the sin within our own mind, for this is true repentance?" - Dajian Hui-neng or Huineng

"Hypocritical, proud, and arrogant, living in delusion and clinging to their deluded ideas, insatiable in their desires, they pursue unclean ends… Bound on all sides by scheming and anxiety, driven by anger and greed, they amass by any means they can a hoard of money for the satisfaction of their cravings… Self-important, obstinate, swept away by the pride of wealth, they ostentatiously perform sacrifices without any regard for their purpose. Egotistical, violent, arrogant, lustful, angry, envious of everyone, they abuse my presence within their own bodies and in the bodies of others." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

"Don’t take life so seriously. This world is a terrible place; there is no safety here. But what are we to do? We must stop taking life so seriously. Delusion can be overcome by holding steadfastly to one philosophy: everything here is nothing more than God’s motion picture." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Never concentrate on your faults. By doing so you identify yourself with them. You are the one who puts the veil of delusion in front of your wisdom’s eyes. Whatsoever you think, that is what you are." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Vision is an idle dream at best and a cynical delusion at worst - but not an achievable end. " - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone — better jobs, health care, and so forth — there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met — in my utopia, anyway — life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander

"We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us." - Albert Einstein

"Suffering from election-year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of." - Ralph Nader

"Without repentance those who have crated peace through their power imagine that they have created pure peace: and suffer from the delusion that the enemies of their peace are God" - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"Without repentance those who have created peace through their power imagine that they have created pure peace: and suffer from the delusion that the enemies of their peace are God" - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator of the Middle East. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. " - Richard Dawkins

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." - Richard Dawkins

"It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead." - Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay

"Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it." - Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey

"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Its soul, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My god! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!" - Thomas Jefferson

"Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us." - Thomas Jefferson

"He who follows words is destroyed." - Thomas Merton

"Unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men." - Thomas Merton

"If we really wanted to honor our boys, why didn’t we let them sit on the reviewing stands and make the people march those fifteen miles? They didn’t want to parade, they wanted to go home and rest." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"To me many of my colleagues at Time, basically kind and intensely well-meaning people, seemed to me as charming and as removed from reality as fish in a fish bowl. To me they seemed to know little about the forces that were shaping the history of our time. To me they seemed like little children, knowing and clever little children, but knowing and clever chiefly about trifling things while they were extremely resistant to finding out about anything else." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"''God is Love,'' we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Slowly we are learning, we at least know this much, that we have to unlearn much that we were taught, and are growing chary of emphatic dogmas; Love like Matter is much odder than we thought." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods Our blue shadows are enormous We move in a gigantic, joyful world" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The feeling of self-worth of every person is like an elevator, right? Your feeling of self-value goes up, stays up for a short time, plunges down again. Something favorable comes across your path and the elevator goes up. Up and down. Up and down. Always restless. Never stable, never still. Always making a racket and making movements. This a form of self-betrayal, which you have not as yet detected." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Do not cage God in a picture frame. Do not confine him in an idol. He is all forms; He is all Names." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"It takes time for a fruit to mature and acquire sweetness and become eatable; time is a prime factor for most good fortunes." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad" - Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

"Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world: It is not he who prays most or fasts most, it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it." - William Law

"Therein does the conscious Self (purusha) experience pain caused by decay and death, until dissociation from the subtle body; thus suffering is in the very nature of things." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

"Questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal