61 quotes
One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.
Here there are neither Russians nor English, Jews nor Christians, but only those who pursue one aim — to be able to be.
In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
Faith cannot be given to man.Faith arises in a man and increases … from understanding.
Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced.
Sincerity is the key which will open the door through which you will see your separate parts, and you will see something quite new. You must go on trying to be sincere. Each day you put on a mask, and you must take it off little by little.
All and Everything: Views from the Real World (1973)
Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.
Man such as we know him, is a machine.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
Fear of grieving parents and teachers.
All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)
Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation, says "I".
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
The striving early to earn one's bread.
All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)
Patient endurance of pain and hunger.
All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)
Only help him who is not an idler.
It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
It is impossible to recognize a wrong way without knowing the right way. This means that it is no use troubling oneself how to recognize a wrong way. One must think of how to find the right way.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
A man can keep silence in such a ways that no one will even notice it. The whole point is that we say a good deal too much. If we limited ourselves to what is actually necessary, this alone would be keeping the silence.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind, but in the body and the feelings. Unfortunately, however, our body and our feelings are so constituted that they don’t care a jot about anything so long as they are happy.
All and Everything: Views from the Real World (1973)
Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "I"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
'Yes, Professor, knowledge and understanding are quite different. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge is but a passing presence in it. New knowledge displaces the old and the result is, as it were, a pouring from the empty into the void.
All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)
Every one of those unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence, and also that tendency to hate others which flows from it.
All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)
It is very difficult to explain what takes place in me when I see or hear anything majestic which allows no doubt that it proceeds from the actualization of Our Maker Creator. Each time, my tears flow of themselves. I weep, that is to say, it weeps in me, not from grief, no, but as if from tenderness.
All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)