Quotes by Philosophers - Page 205

If you are untrustworthy, people will not trust you.
Lao Tzu
If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed
Alan W. Watts
...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.
Albert Camus
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
Confucius
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The source of all light is in the eye.
Alan W. Watts
I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.
Arthur Schopenhauer
I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light.
Criss Jami
If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts it, it's only becasue it doesn't know that the fire can consume it.
Giordano Bruno
Thus it is said:The path into the light seems dark,the path forward seems to go back,the direct path seems long,true power seems weak,true purity seems tarnished,true steadfastness seems changeable,true clarity seems obscure,the greatest are seems unsophisticated,the greatest love seems indifferent,the greatest wisdom seems childish.The Tao is nowhere to be found.Yet it nourishes and completes all things.
Lao Tzu
I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.
Denis Diderot
For it is one thing to see the Land of Peace from a wooded ridge, and yet another to walk the road that leads to it.
Augustine of Hippo
The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things.
G.K. Chesterton
No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.
Plato
It's dark because you're trying too hard," said Susila. "Dark because you want it to be light. Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl. 'Lightly, child, lightly. You've got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly, act lightly, feel lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.' I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly—it was the best advice ever given me. Well, now I'm going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi . . . Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely unencumbered.
Aldous Huxley
But perhaps there are insensitive hearts, still incapable of receiving this Light because the weight of their sins prevents them from seeing it. Let them not imagine that they Light is absent because they do not see it, for on account of their sins they are in darkness. ‘And the Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness understood it not’ (Jn 1:5). Therefore, Brothers, like the blind man exposed to the sun, the sun being present to him but he being absent from the sun, so the insensitive one, the sinner, the impious has a blind heart.
Augustine of Hippo
I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I have a moment's conversation?""Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak wonder.Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself--there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold.""All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
G.K. Chesterton
Light is the shadow of god
Plato
When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of … Nothing is left but to love.
Alan W. Watts
Where there are two on point of independently distinguished purposes, you will find one infinite journey whose path is blazed with the guiding light of wisdom.
T.F. Hodge
To the short-sighted, through the fog, God must be a monster.
Criss Jami
When you have gone beyond thinking, and if you can still remain alert, aware, as if one is fast asleep but still alert—deep down at the very core of one’s being a lamp goes on burning, a small candle of light—then you will see your original face. And to see your original face is to be back in the Garden of Eden.
Osho
Stars shine even for those who refuse to look up.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You know you walk in the light when the enemy keeps reminding you of your past mistakes, because the enemy's role is to derail into darkness.
Gift Gugu Mona
I little esteeme to see your visage and figure, little doe I regard the night and darknesse thereof, for you are my only light.
Apuleius
In the soul where Christ savingly is, there He lives. He not only lives without it, so as violently to actuate it, but He lives in it, so that the soul also is alive. Grace in the soul is as much from Christ, as the light in a glass, held out in the sunbeams, is from the sun. But this represents the manner of the communication of grace to the soul only in part; because the glass remains as it was, the nature of it not being at all changed; it is as much without any lightsomeness in its nature as ever. But the soul of a saint receives light from the Sun of Righteousness, in such a manner that its nature is changed, and it becomes properly a luminous thing; not only does the sun shine in the saints, but they also become little suns, partaking of the nature of the Fountain of their light. In this respect, the manner of their derivation of light is like that of the lamps in the tabernacle, rather than that of a reflecting glass; which, though they were lit up by fire from heaven, yet thereby became themselves burning shining things.
Jonathan Edwards
Even the rain in its night singing, / the night rain in its forgetting, / is a kind of light.
Jan Zwicky
Who can be close to you without the Divine Light of his heart?
Sorin Cerin
Love, I'm pretty sure, is light.
Jan Zwicky
With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Light is shallow; darkness is infinitely deep. Light is always bounded, it has boundaries. Darkness has no boundaries, it is unbounded. Light comes and goes; darkness always is. When there is light you cannot see it. When light is not there you can see it. But it is always there; you cannot cause it. Light has a cause. You burn the fire, you put on wood. When the wood is finished the light will be gone. It is caused, hence it is an effect. But darkness is not caused by anything, it is not an effect. It is uncaused eternity.
Osho
Love is not consolation. It is light.
Simone Weil
The path towards peace is not for the righteous, the ethical, the active and the compassionate to shit on the malicious, the complacent, the violent and the ignorant. The path towards peace is to be peaceful.
Ilyas Kassam
Only those who have the great capacity of genuine trust can enter this realm [the realm of the buddhas]. Those who have no trust are unable to accept it, however much they hear it.
Dōgen
Know that the true dharma emerges of itself [during the practice of zazen], clearing away hindrances and distractions.
Dōgen
Purification in Shinto lifts the burden from the shoulders of the individual and washes it away.
Stuart D.B. Picken
Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes,and meditate to know if the world's true or lies,may do so. It's their choice. But I meanwhilewith hungry eyes that can't be satisfiedshall take a look at the world in broad daylight.
Rabindranath Tagore
Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
When there is silence one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself
Lao Tzu
Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody "I love you", when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, worshipping the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world; watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again - you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Choice is the doorway to our creative power. To unleash this power, we must begin from the state of beingness.
Ilchi Lee
The reason I regard training that involves the ki energy as crucial is because ki energy is the bridge that links our body and mind. . . when you focus deeply inside on the ki energy, your mind becomes calm and serene. There's a feeling of peaceful comfort and safety that's hard to describe. Inside of that, there's no fear that you might lose something, there is no desperate need to control others, nor is there the desire for recognition or acceptance. There is only one self that is infinitely bright and peaceful and seems that for it anything would be possible.
Ilchi Lee
The key to meditation is to exist one hundred percent in the here and now.
Ilchi Lee
Everything in existence undergoes constant change. The things that surround us, even our selves are temporary manifestations of Ki energy.
Ilchi Lee
Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy.
Ilchi Lee
. . . if you close your eyes and begin to feel your breath, it will instantly become deeper and slower, and your mind will become calmer. Then gradually you'll become aware of your body, or more precisely the subtle sense of energy inside and around your body. At that moment, you exist as Energy-Consciousness, not as names, jobs, duties, roles, desires, and so on.
Ilchi Lee
I don't believe in greatness that is bestowed as a rare gift to a few lucky ones. Rather, I think all people have greatness inside them. It is just a matter of persistence--sticking to what you have envisioned until it is reality. I have a deep conviction that everyone, including you, has been given exactly the right set of gifts to fulfill some magnificent purpose in life. Greatness must simply be chosen. And if you choose it, it will happen.
Ilchi Lee
The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to “black out” or “forget” various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a “constant Consciousness” or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.
Ken Wilber
If you look within your heart, I am here, and you are free.
Ilchi Lee
He had forgotten how to soar upon the wings of his soul...
Ilchi Lee
Poetry is the way that we transcend language through language. And thus our freedom lies in the poetry of all things
Ilyas Kassam
Sedona is beautiful, but your soul is even more beautiful.
Ilchi Lee
Observing is not just seeing. It is watching with attention.
Ilchi Lee
The innumerable phenomena of life are temporary manifestations of LifeParticles.Once we know that everything comes and goes in a flux of LifeParticles, we can watch ourselves and the world with tranquility.
Ilchi Lee
My beloved jay, give me a name now. call out the name you give me, looking into the deepest place in your heart. Everytime you call my name, I'll fly to you and be your wings.
Ilchi Lee
Through Life Particles, the thoughts in your mind are the seeds of your present and future experiences that will blossom when given enough energy through action with your focused attention.
Ilchi Lee & Seung Heun Lee
If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours each night, renounce sex, and subsist on a diet of raw vegetables, you would find a new golf instructor. However, when gurus make demands of this kind, many of their students simply do as directed.
Sam Harris
You can encounter the great life within you when you recover the zero point. When you encounter that great life, all limits created by the thoughts and emotions vanish and infinite creativity springs forth.
Ilchi Lee
The Soul bird sang:"My beloved Jay, Look into my eyes. Look deeply, and you will remember hope.You will remember the power of your mind,The great power, big as the sky, that makes all things possible. Look straight into my eyes.I can restore to you the hope you've lost.I can enable restore to you the hope you've lost. I can enable you to meet your infinite, eternal min. That is what I can do for you.I am your soul.I, who restore your lost hope, am your soul.
Ilchi Lee