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Recognize what is in your sight, and what is hidden will become clear to you. Jesus Christ (4 B.C.E.)

Bring all opposites inside yourself and reconcile them; understand that you are everywhere, on the land, in the sea, in the sky; realize that you haven't yet been begotten, that you are still in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you are dead, that you are in the world beyond the grave; hold all this in your mind, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes: then you can perceive God. Hermetic Writings (150)

When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us seek the cause rather in ourselves than elsewhere. It is the action of an uninstructed person to lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others; of a partly instructed person, to lay the fault on himself; and of one perfectly instructed, neither on others, nor on himself. Epictetus (55)

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. William Blake (1757)

Devote six years to your work, but in the seventh go into solitude or among strangers so that your friends, by remembering what you were, do not prevent you from being what you have become. Leo Szilard (1898)

The only sane thing to do with the world is to let it struggle with its own problems. You can do this only when seeing clearly that the world prefers to struggle painfully with its problems, never really wanting solutions. Vernon Howard (1918)

What comfort, what strength, what economy there is in order -- material order, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going and what one wishes -- this is order; to keep one's word and one's engagements -- again order; to have everything ready under one's hand to be able to dispose of all one's forces, and to have all one's means of whatever kind under command -- still order; to discipline one's habits, ones efforts, one's wishes; to organize one's life, to distribute one's time...all this belongs to and is included in the word order. Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over oneself; order is power. Henri Amiel (1821)

Think of your own faults the first part of the night when you are awake, and of the faults of others the latter part of the night when you are asleep. Chinese Proverb

Plunged in thy depth of mercy let me die
The death that every soul that lives desires.
William Cowper (1731)

Everyone foolishly assumes that his clock alone tells correct time. Christians claim to possess exclusive truth. Countless varieties of Hindus insist that their sect, no matter how small and insignificant, expresses the ultimate position. Devout Muslims maintain that Koranic revelation supersedes all others. The entire world is being driven insane by this single phrase: "My religion alone is true." O Mother, you have shown me that no clock is entirely accurate. Only the transcendent sun of knowledge remains on time. Who can make a system from Divine Mystery? But if any sincere practitioner, within whatever culture or religion, prays and meditates with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, Your Grace will flood his mind and heart, O Mother. His particular sacred tradition will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the one goal of spiritual evolution. Sri Ramakrishna (1836)

Can a person or a thing, regarded in its solidity, avoid being seen when it comes before our eyes? The higher divine realities on the other hand, even when they are in front of us, can be perceived only with their own consent. It depends entirely on them whether they are seen or hidden. It was by grace that God revealed himself to Abraham and the other prophets. The eye of the heart itself did not allow Abraham to see God, but the grace of God was offered spontaneously to the gaze of that righteous man. Origen (185)

Again I saw Him in my house. Among all those everyday things He appeared unexpectedly and became unutterably united and merged with me, and leaped over to me without anything in between, as fire to iron, as the light to glass. And He made me like fire and like light. And I became that which I saw before and beheld from afar. I do not know how to relate this miracle to you. And I could not understand, and even now I do not entirely understand how He entered into me and how He was united with me. But now that I am united with Him, how can I tell you who He is, who has united with me and with whom I, in turn, am united? I fear that if I related it to you, you would not believe it and, falling from ignorance into blasphemy, my brother, you might lose your soul. He, with whom I am united, and I have become one. But how shall I call myself who was united with Him? God, who is twofold in nature and one in essence, made me also twofold, and endowed me with a twofold name. This is the distinction: I am man by nature, and God by the grace of God. Symeon, The Younger (949)

When you know yourselves, then you will be known and you will understand that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and you are poverty. Jesus Christ (4 B.C.E.)

Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God who worketh all in all. St. Paul (39)

May all I am and do return to praise the One! Old Aramaic Prayer (30)

Inside the heart there burns a large fire, yet no smoke is seen, but fire grows higher: he who it burns away that flame does know, and he also knows He who did make it grow. Kabir (1398)

That man by retiring from all externals and withdrawing into himself in the centre of his own unity becometh most like unto God. Gregory Nazianzen (328)

Such endless depths lie in the Divinity, and in the wisdom of God, that as he maketh one, so he maketh every one the end of the World, and the supernumerary persons being enrichers of his inheritance. Adam and the World are both mine. And the posterity of Adam enrich it infinitely. Souls are God's jewels, every one of which is worth many worlds. They are his riches because his image, and mine for that reason. So that I alone am the end of the World, angels and men being all mine. And if others are so, they are made to enjoy it for my further advancement. God only being the Giver and I the Receiver. So that Seneca philosophized rightly when he said "Des me dedit solu toti Mundo, et totum mundum mihi soli." ("God gave me alone to all the world, and all the world to me alone.") Thomas Traherne (1637)

The love of God, unutterable and perfect, flows into a pure soul the way light rushes into a transparent object. Dante (1265)

It is useless quibbling over a mere word, even if that word is God. To accept or reject it, when we have no knowledge of what it may represent, is equally inappropriate. God is a mystery, and the mystery remains, whatever name we give to it. Walled Garden Of Truth (1200)

When all limitations are transcended, nothing remains but the One Will that is I. J. G. Bennett (1897)

All the Messengers of God are the same and yet they are many; that God manifests in his Messengers, but that they are not God. Islamic Saying (599)

God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason. Dag Hammarskjold (1905)

I find the doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans. George MacDonald (1824)

The spiritual life justifies itself to those who live it, but what can we say to those who do not understand? This, at least, we can say: that it is a life whose experiences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with the objective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to find that they are but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. These highest experiences that I have had of God's presence have been rare and brief -- flashes of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with surprise -- God is here! J. Trevor (1923)