In the mouth of Society are many diseased teeth, decayed to the bones of the jaws. But Society makes no effort to have them extracted and be rid of the affliction. It contents itself with gold fillings.
Everyone has experienced that truth: that love, like a running brook, is disregarded, taken for granted; but when the brook freezes over, then people begin to remember how it was when it ran, and they want it to run again.
Seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Persecution cannot harm him who stands by Truth. Did not Socrates fall proudly a victim in body? Was not Paul stoned for the sake of the Truth? It is our inner selves that hurt us when we disobey it, and it kills us when we betray it.
Every man is two men; one is awake in the darkness, the other asleep in the light.
That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
The highest virtue here may be least in another world.
You work that you may keep peace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely.
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Your saying ‘I do not understand you’ is praise beyond my worth, and an insult you do not deserve.
I would tell you more of Him, but how shall I? When love becomes vast love becomes wordless. And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep.
In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other’s speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.
Men would bless you or curse you; The curse, a protest against failure, The blessing, a hymn of the hunter Who comes back from the hills With provision for his mate.
A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free.
He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.
If winter should say, ‘Spring is in my heart,’ who would believe winter?
Learn the words of wisdom uttered by the wise and apply them in your own life. Live them – but do not a make a show of reciting them, for he who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass loaded with books.
Yet has not Man wept at the sounds? And are not his tears eloquent understanding?