Echoes

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

He who cannot find himself the retreat of his own soul, let him appeal to solitude — if he can even bear himself.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.

Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half-awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.

Therefore, this terror of the mind and the darkness must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun or the bright light of day, but by the appearance and reasoning of nature.

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

Though the whole world should praise him, he would not be stimulated to greater endeavour, and though the whole world should condemn him, he would not be depressed. So fixed was he in the difference between the internal judgement of himself and the external judgement of others.

To consort with the crowd is harmful; there is no person who does not make some vice attractive to us, or stamp it upon us, or taint us unconsciously therewith.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

After the dazzle of day is gone, only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; after the plain of the surface and the breakers have gone, the depths of the ocean show beautiful forms.

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

Never did I think so much, never did I realize my own existence so much, never was I so much alive, so much myself, as in those journeys which I made alone and on foot.