Quote collection
446 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless."
"With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child,he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace."
"To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning."
"Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born."
"You're quite right there," he said. "I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation."
"Romantic souvenirs had a way of attaching themselves to one when one wanted to move on, but they were not to be taken seriously."
"Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them."
"All life was a breath exhaled by God. All dying was a breath inhaled by God."
"I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got."
"What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile."
"Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence"
"Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order."
"You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing."
"Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast."
"When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all."
"Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else."
"Like one who has eaten and drunk too much and vomits painfully and then feels better, so did the restless man wish he could rid himself with one terrific heave of these pleasures, of these habits of this entirely senseless life."
"Every sin already carries grace within in, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people - eternal life. The Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin."
"I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength."
"Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him."