06 / In their own words
The Quotes Collection
Short lines from the thinkers, teachers and writers in the Reading Room, gathered by theme. Read one slowly and notice what it asks of you.
A small daily practice
Read it twice.
Notice what it asks.
Your power is in your thoughts, so stay awake. In other words, remember to remember.
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207 quotes to read slowly
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.
The present is the point of power.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent.
You can’t create a new personal reality as the same personality.
The mind exists in all time zones at once, both its hidden operations and its visible ones.
The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth.
Most of us are good "starters" but poor "finishers" of everything we begin.
You are an eternal dreamer dreaming non-eternal dreams.
Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain.
To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact.
Your mind is a tool for you to use in any way you wish.
If we wait for the world's permission to shine, we will never receive it.
In the deepest sense, you free yourself by finding yourself.
Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes.
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places.
Meet hatred with love and you elevate not only yourself but also the one who bears you hatred.
Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.
That which is not natural, but acquired, cannot be permanent, and is not worth striving for.
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea.
Wherever you find a boastful person, you find one who is secretly doubtful and afraid.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
Emotions, like physical actions or intellectual processes, become habitual by repetition.
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.
To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.
Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it.
Always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment.
When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself.
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.
The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself.
Find a place where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
Never go to sleep feeling discouraged or dissatisfied.
Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands.
It's only a thought, and a thought can be changed.
Ultimately I realized that the person I was waiting for was myself.
You can do no more than you believe you can. You can be no more than you believe you are.
When you pay attention to what feeds your energy, you move in the direction of the life for which you were intended.
The optimist is right. The pessimist is right. The one differs from the other as the light from the dark. Yet both are right.
Compassion arises out of the boundaryless nature of love.
Like fire in a piece of flint, knowledge is existing in the mind; the suggestion is the friction that brings out that fire.
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
Realize that Fear paralyzes effort, and that Courage promotes activity.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.
Free to read. Yours to explore.