Echoes

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

There are some men who expose themselves to damnation so foolishly by avarice, by brutality, by debauches, by violence, by excesses, by blasphemies! ...it is always a great folly for a man to expose himself to damnation... He must despise desire and its kingdom, and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love, and desire nothing but the benefits of love.

Be detached from desire your whole life long.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose your veracity, and sink into base downright lying.

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

Those who are slaves to their appetites cannot preserve their reason, their memory, or their senses in their full vigour; for a full belly does not produce a fine mind.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?"

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.

One should not eat unless one is hungry, nor drink unless one is thirsty.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

A person should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, he should eat until he has consumed approximately three quarters of his fill.

In pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

The food which a temperate man leaves upon his plate is more beneficial than that which a glutton eats.

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.

Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Do not, my soul, seek immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.