Echoes

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful — more free of interruptions — than your own soul.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics.

Withdraw into yourself as much as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve.

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

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.

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

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

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

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.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge.

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

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

How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.

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.

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 the quiet mind all things are possible.