Describe the aroma of coffee. —Why can’t it be done? Do we lack the words? and for what are words lacking?—But whence comes the idea that such a description must after all be possible? Have you ever felt the lack of such a description? Have you tried to describe the aroma and not succeeded?

Love itself is the healing power and the remedy for all pain.

We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

Mercy shall not be done men alone, but shall go beyond, and embrace the whole world.

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self chosen ignorance.

Learning to live each moment of our daily life deeply, in mindfulness and concentration, is the practice.

As soon as you lift up your consciousness to the state of divine awareness, you see the oceanic current of God’s light flowing behind all matter. You see everything in terms of Spirit.

Strengthening the mind is not done by making it move around as is done to the body but by bringing it to a halt, bringing it to rest.

Each time you follow a moral principle, knowingly or unknowingly, you attune your self to the Supreme Self…. You turn your heart from darkness to the source of all light.

You will recognize that you have returned to your natural state by a complete absence of all desire and fear.

There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.

When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of great activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe.

If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens.

Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, “Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.” By then, pigs will be your style.

In order to understand others, we must know them and be inside their skin. Then we can treat them with loving kindness. The source of love is our fully awakened mind.

There is a lesson in each experience. Learn  it and become wise.

True courage is the product of tenderness. It arises when we let the world touch our heart, our heart that is so beautiful and so bare.

To light a candle is to cast a shadow…

Once changes from day to day… every few years one becomes a new being.

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it—to realize it to the full—to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.

If we want to see the nature of our lives, we must actually be present, aware, awake.

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.

An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.

All this life and love and strife and failure—is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint dawning day?

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.

Oh! to be that strong in myself, that I ask not the morrow to be revealed.

There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but the second best.

The only clear view is from atop the mountain of your dead selves.