Echoes

This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life. This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, / A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness — / Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

God rests in Himself, and makes all things rest in Him.

Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber! Who ever sounded the bottom thereof? Yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself comprehend all that I am.

In the midst of silence there was spoken within me a secret word. But to hear this word in stillness, all things must be hushed and at rest in this silence — there must be a stillness, and then we may hear it. The very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within.

Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. ... Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.

With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.

When despair for the world grows in me I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.

Do this, my dear Lucilius: claim yourself for yourself; gather and save the time which until now was either being taken from you or stolen from you or simply slipping away.

Take rest; a field that has rested yields a bountiful crop.

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows: empty, yet inexhaustible. The more it is worked, the more it yields. Many words count for little — hold fast to the center.

Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, as we make war that we may live in peace.

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

For those who are awake, there is one common world; but of those who sleep, each turns aside into a private world of his own.

My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you—are you there? I have returned, here I am again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you anew. Shall I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know, the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call "divine". There is no other way. All other ways are false paths.

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust — ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separations — saying, "Ever since I was parted from the reed-bed, my lament hath caused man and woman to moan. I want a bosom torn by severance, that I may unfold to such a one the pain of love-desire."

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

The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. For it is that above all which prevents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction.

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.