Echoes

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything.

External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.

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

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. For example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have appeared so to Socrates; but the judgment that death is terrible — that is the terrible thing.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.

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.

Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations...

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?

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

You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models.

People often say that I'm curious about too many things at once. But can you really forbid a man from harboring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him?

The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five flavors dull the taste. Racing and hunting madden the mind. Precious things lead one astray. Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees. He lets go of that and chooses this.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors — walking, leaping, climbing, dancing.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror — going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.