Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

One of my major keys is actually the master keys: God.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.

Some people awaken spiritually without ever coming into contact with any meditation technique or any spiritual teaching. They may awaken simply because they can’t stand the suffering anymore.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

Truth is what works.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

Law is mind without reason.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

Life is warfare.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face.

The Word of God is active, energizing, sharp and powerful like a two-edged sword.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.