Echoes

Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit, and the muse; Nothing refuse.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love.

One dies twice: to cease to live is nothing, but to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy and lightness

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them.

The best fighter is never angry.

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

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

The love of Heaven and Earth is impartial, and they demand nothing from the myriad things. The love of the sages is impartial, and they demand nothing from the people. The cooperation between Heaven and Earth is much like how a bellows works! Within the emptiness there is limitless potential; in moving, it keeps producing without end. Complaining too much only leads to misfortune. It is better to stay in the center of serenity.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.

Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them...the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Be detached from desire your whole life long.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

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

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

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