More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?
And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
There are those who give little of the much which they have – and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’.
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary. And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, And all work is empty save when there is love; And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
I genuinely believe that we can feel if the artist's work is made out of love.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Your house is your larger body.
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And you who would understand justice, how shall you unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.” Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Remind me of one of my favourites quotes: “I have felt knowledge within me, just as one feels life within one’s heart.” ~ Hermann Hesse
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
*mic drop*
You are good when you are one with yourself.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?
For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive: And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted: Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard. It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?
