It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
One can acquire money, fame and distinction, but one cannot create happiness or unhappiness, not for oneself or for others. One can only accept what comes, although one can, to be sure, accept it in entirely different ways.
Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one. Every.
And as far as talent is concerned, there will be such an excess that our artists will become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.
Everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves.
And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of his form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace.
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.
You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like thing to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time.
In the beginning his dream and his happiness, in the end it was his bitter fate...But in the midst of the freedom he had attained Harry suddenly became aware that his freedom was a death and that he stood alone.
Too much thinking was still not good for me.
There was only greed for living and dread, and out of dread, out of stupid childish dread of the cold, of loneliness, of death, two people fled to one another, kissed, embraced, rubbed cheek to cheek, put leg to leg, cast new human beings into the world. That was how it was.
A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real.
The wheel of physical manifestations is turning quickly, Govinda.
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
While one is singing one does not think about whether of not the singing is useful. One simply sings.
I was a gamble of Nature, a throw of the dice into an uncertain realm, leading perhaps to something new, perhaps to nothing; and to let this throw from the primordial depths take effect, to feel its will inside myself and adopt it completely as my own will: that alone was my vocation. That alone! I.
For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.
During this long … journey, I realised the impossibility of running away and escaping.
Even those who have average gifts, given a few hundred years, come to maturity.
There are few people who know how to listen and I have not met anybody who can do so like you.
Every person's life is a journey toward himself, the attempt at a journey, the intimation of a path. No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities. Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world.
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.
Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.
Can't you see that you had to be a reckless drifter to bring ... people a bit of child's folly and child's laughter wherever you went? To make all sorts of people love you a little and tease you a little and be a little grateful to you?
From the most ancient days of China to the myths of the Greeks we find the concept of an ideal, heavenly life for men under the hegemony of music. The Glass Bead Game is intimately bound up with this cult of music (in eternal transmutations the secret power of song greets us here below, says Novalis).
Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they have only themselves to think of.
In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.
Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
Deeply he felt, more deeply than ever before, in this hour, the indestructibility of every life, the eternity of every moment.
I had often observed the sparkle in the eye of those who told me of it and I had always treated it with a half-superior, half-envious smile.
That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.
I have always been a great dreamer. In dreams I have always been more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of my health and energy.
Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke.
Suddenly street and city became transformed, had the unfamiliar face that familiar things take on when our heart has taken leave of them. He looked back at the door of the house: it had become the door to a strange house that was now closed to him.
The devil has spit in the soup. Nothing comes out even. Nothing sounds right. Nothing rejoices and warms. Everything is desolate, sad, foul. All strings out of tune. All colors faded.
Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.
Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.
On one part of the footpath where a thin trickle of water from a small spring kept it damp, I found … a swarm of … small, blue butterflies drinking the water. … I only went that way on sunny days and each time the dense, blue swarm was there, and each time it was a holiday.
The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
Sinclair, your love is attracted to me. Once it begins to attract me, i will come. I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won.
There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.
Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create.
His face turned scornful for a moment when he considered that wise people serve fools almost everywhere.
But we'll never again be so young … Or don't you like dancing?
Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden - forbidden for him.
I am superior to you only in one point: I'm awake, whereas you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them.
