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And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.” And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; To return home at e...
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For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
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.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
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. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.
When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.
God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. “Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.” The tired and the weary say, “Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit. “Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.” But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains, “And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Man’s needs change, but not his love, nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things, And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
