“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part
of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to
impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be
communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it,
but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of
pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion
instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
“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.”
“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a
little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a
little foolish.”
“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw
into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude
is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the
spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the
midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul
we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it
easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able
to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the
thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his
goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open,
having no goal.”
“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is
not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn
to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and
complement.”
“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.”
“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it
is letting go”
“Without words, without writing and without books there would
be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever
good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and
transform it into something of value.”
“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people
live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile
without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of
love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful
in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable
from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do. ”
“Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the
years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still,
wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars
revolve.”
“That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged —
to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life
in its mysterious, innate harmony.”
“You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”
“Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to
show us how much we can endure.”
“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that
perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That
is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of
them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path
is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so
much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become
a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the
greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”
“It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world,
to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world,
not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the
world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.”
“There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and
still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk,
so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure
fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is
within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the
apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don't try to lie
to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not
harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it
storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your
poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy,
the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes,
while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the
mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!”
“Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving
those who destroy them.”
“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure
without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch,
every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness
to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration
of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being
conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the
bad feeling of being used or misused.”
“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.”