Echoes

Be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.

No one saves us but ourselves, No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path Buddhas merely teach the way. By ourselves is evil done, By ourselves is pain endured, By ourselves we cease from wrong, By ourselves become we pure.

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.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

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.

The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.

The destiny of man is in his own soul.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

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

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

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

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.

Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique. Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

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.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

What does your conscience say? — You should become who you are.

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.