Echoes

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

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

Nor less I deem that there are Powers / Which of themselves our minds impress; / That we can feed this mind of ours / In a wise passiveness.

The purpose of life...is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

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 only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.

I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.

...why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

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

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

If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.

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

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

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.

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few.

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

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.