Echoes

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whisper of the gods.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

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.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, And fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

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.

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well.'

I need the sea because it teaches me. I don't know if I learn music or awareness, if it's a single wave or its vast existence, or only its harsh voice or its shining suggestion of fishes and ships. The fact is that until I fall asleep, in some magnetic way I move in the university of the waves.

The sun and distant stars appeared to mingle in the perfection of the same natural order, and I felt, in the stillness of the tropical night, how much more alive and near to the heavens was this part of the earth.

The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

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.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Empty mountain — no one in sight, / yet voices of men are heard. / Sun's reflected light enters the deep wood, / shining once more upon green moss.

Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / it gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.

In silence and in stillness a devout soul maketh progress, and learneth the mysteries of Holy Scripture.

An old silent pond. A frog jumps into the pond — splash! Silence again.

"Tell me, gentle traveller, thou Who hast wandered far and wide, Seen the sweetest roses blow And the brightest rivers glide,— Say, of all thine eyes have seen, Which the fairest land has been.""Lady, shall I tell thee where Nature seems most blest and fair, Far above all climes beside?— ’Tis where those we love abide; And that little spot is best Which the loved one’s foot hath pressed."Though it be a fairy space, Wide and spreading is the place; Though ’twere but a barren mound, ’Twould become enchanted ground. With thee, yon sandy waste would seem The margin of Al Cawthar's stream; And thou canst make a dungeon’s gloom A bower where new-born roses bloom.

The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard.

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.