Everything Quotes

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

Religions get lost as people do.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Writers speak stench.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.