Echoes

He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.

Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

A tree as great as a man's embrace grows from a tiny shoot. A terrace nine stories high rises from a handful of earth. A journey of a thousand li begins beneath one's feet.

Coming, going, the waterbirds don't leave a trace don't follow a path.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.

One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil.

So long as you cling to your fear of dying, you will hear neither the voice of life nor the voice of your soul. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy.

We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in. We too should so blend whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, that it may be all the clearer for being drawn from many sources; and then, by applying the supervising care with which our nature has endowed us, we should so blend those several flavors into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from that whence it came.

The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

In truth, singing is a different breath. A breath for nothing. A gust within the god. A wind.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life.

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me never to delight in praise or to be distressed by reproach. Before my Soul taught me, I doubted the value of my accomplishments until the passing days sent someone who would extol or disparage them. But now I know that trees blossom in the spring and give their fruits in the summer without any desire for accolades. And they scatter their leaves abroad in the fall and denude themselves in the winter without fear of reproof.