How mean am I when life gives me gold and I give you silver, and yet I
deem myself generous.
When you reach the heart of life you will find yourself not higher
than the felon, and not lower than the prophet.
Strange that you should pity the slow-footed and not the slow-minded,
And the blind-eyed rather than the blind-hearted.
It is wiser for the lame not to break his crutches upon the head of
his enemy.
How blind is he who gives you out of his pocket that he may take out
of your heart.
Life is a procession. The slow of foot finds it too swift and he steps
out;
And the swift of foot finds it too slow and he too steps out.
If there is such a thing as sin some of us commit it backward
following our forefathers' footsteps;
And some of us commit it forward by overruling our children.
The truly good is he who is one with all those who are deemed bad.
We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some
without.
Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our
rights.
Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at
one another for our lack of originality.
Should we all reveal our virtues we would also laugh for the same
cause.
An individual is above man-made laws until he commits a crime against
man-made conventions; After that he is neither above anyone nor lower
than anyone.
Government is an agreement between you and myself. You and myself are
often wrong.
Crime is either another name of need or an aspect of a disease.
Is there a greater fault than being conscious of the other person's
faults?
If the other person laughs at you, you can pity him; but if you laugh
at him you may never forgive yourself.
If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you
injure him you will always remember.
In truth the other person is your most sensitive self given another
body.
How heedless you are when you would have men fly with your wings and
you cannot even give them a feather.
Once a man sat at my board and ate my bread and drank my wine and went
away laughing at me.
Then he came again for bread and wine, and I spurned him;
And the angels laughed at me.
Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?
It is the honor of the murdered that he is not the murderer.
The tribune of humanity is in its silent heart, never its talkative
mind.
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold;
And I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
They spread before us their riches of gold and silver, of ivory and
ebony, and we spread before them our hearts and our spirits.;
And yet they deem themselves the hosts and us the guests.
I would not be the least among men with dreams and the desire to
fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires.
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and
gold.
We are all climbing toward the summit of our hearts' desire. Should
the other climber steal your sack and your purse and wax fat on the
one and heavy on the other, you should pity him;
The climbing will be harder for his flesh, and the burden will make
his way longer.
And should you in your leanness see his flesh puffing upward, help him
a step; it will add to your swiftness.
You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small
is your knowledge.
I would not listen to a conqueror preaching to the conquered.
The truly free man is he who bears the load of the bond slave
patiently.
A thousand years ago my neighbor said to me, "I hate life, for it
is naught but a thing of pain."
And yesterday I passed by a cemetery and saw life dancing upon his
grave.
Strife in nature is but disorder longing for order.
Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches;
Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the
living earth.
Once I spoke of the sea to a brook, and the brook thought me but an
imaginative exaggerator;
And once I spoke of a brook to the sea, and the sea thought me but a
depreciative defamer.
How narrow is the vision that exalts the busyness of the ant above the
singing of the grasshopper.
The highest virtue here may be the least in another world.
The deep and the high go to the depth or to the height in a straight
line; only the spacious can move in circles.
IF IT WERE not for our conception of weights and measures we would
stand in awe of the firefly as we do before the sun.
A scientist without imagination is a butcher with dull knives and
out-worn scales.
But what would you, since we are not all vegetarians?
When you sing the hungry hears you with his stomach.
Death is not nearer to the aged than to the new-born; neither is life.
If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully; otherwise keep
silent, for there is a man in our neighborhood who is dying.
Mayhap a funeral among men is a wedding feast among the angels.
A forgotten reality may die and leave in its will seven thousand
actualities and facts to be spent in its funeral and the building of a
tomb.
In truth we talk only to ourselves, but sometimes we talk loud enough
that others may hear us.
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it
simply.
If the Milky Way were not within me how should I have seen it or known
it?
Unless I am a physician among physicians they would not believe that I
am an astronomer.
Perhaps the sea's definition of a shell is the pearl.
Perhaps time's definition of coal is the diamond.
Fame is the shadow of passion standing in the light.
A root is a flower that disdains fame.
There is neither religion nor science beyond beauty.
Every great man I have known had something small in his make-up; and
it was that small something which prevented inactivity or madness or
suicide.
The truly great man is he who would master no one, and who would be
mastered by none.
I would not believe that a man is mediocre simply because he kills the
criminals and the prophets.
Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness.
Worms will turn; but is it not strange that even elephants will yield?
A disagreement may be the shortest cut between two minds.
I am the flame and I am the dry bush, and one part of me consumes the
other part.
We are all seeking the summit of the holy moutain; but shall not our
road be shorter if we consider the past a chart and not a guide?
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too
grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.
Had I filled myself with all that you know what room should I have for
all that you do not know?
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the
intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful
to these teachers.
A bigot is a stone-leaf orator.
The silence of the envious is too noisy.
When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the
beginning of what you should sense.
An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
If you can see only what light reveals and hear only what sound
announces,
Then in truth you do not see nor do you hear.
A fact is a truth unsexed.
You cannot laugh and be unkind at the same time.
The nearest to my heart are a king without a kingdom and a poor man
who does not know how to beg.
A shy failure is nobler than an immodest success.
Dig anywhere in the earth and you will find a treasure, only you must
dig with the faith of a peasant.
Said a hunted fox followed by twenty horsemen and a pack of twenty
hounds, "Of course they will kill me. But how poor and how stupid
they must be. Surely it would not be worth while for twenty foxes
riding on twenty asses and accompanied by twenty wolves to chase and
kill one man."
It is the mind in us that yields to the laws made by us, but never the
spirit in us.
A traveler am I and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region
within my soul.
A woman protested saying, "Of course it was a righteous war. My
son fell in it."
I said to Life, "I would hear Death speak."
And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, "You hear him
now."
When you have solved all the mysteries of life you long for death, for
it is but another mystery of life.
Birth and death are the two noblest expressions of bravery.
My friend, you and I shall remain strangers unto life,
And unto one another, and each unto himself,
Until the day when you shall speak and I shall listen
Deeming your voice my own voice;
And when I shall stand before you
Thinking myself standing before a mirror.
They say to me, "Should you know yourself you would know all
men."
And I say, "Only when I seek all men shall I know myself."
MAN IS TWO men; one is awake in darkness, the other is asleep in
light.
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy
the world wholly and without interruption.
There lies a green field between the scholar and the poet; should the
scholar cross it he becomes a wise man; should the poet cross it, he
becomes a prophet.
Yestereve I saw philosophers in the market-place carrying their heads
in baskets, and crying aloud, "Wisdom! Wisdom for sale!"
Poor philosophers! They must needs sell their heads to feed their
hearts.
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