c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted.
— Joseph Ratner, The Philosophy of Spinoza
Not all light is good. There is negative light, that can cast bad shadows.
— Anthony Liccione
The heart will find solace after a lost love, but once the soul is betrayed and broken it will always bleed and the wounds will never really heal,,,,
— Camelia C.
He looked down at the mask hanging around his neck. So simple a lie, and he could walk freely throughout the world.But would he then be trapped within the web of his own deception? What freedom could he find in denying the truth about himself?
— R.A. Salvatore, The Halfling's Gem
He could have a break at last, albeit a short one, one he sorely needed. And with that appealing thought he further squelched the subconscious screams, true message lost in the deceptive world of emotion and will.
— Marcha A. Fox, A Psilent Place Below
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,/ Wherein the...enemy does much.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
When Eve upon the first of MenThe apple press’d with specious cant,Oh! what a thousand pities thenThat Adam was not adamant!
— Thomas Hood
For a terrible time of life a teen-ager deceives himself
—  he believes he can trick the world. He believes he is invulnerable. An adolescent who is an orphan at this phase is in danger of never growing up.
My lifeless body - a boat with sunken anchors, without leader on board, without harbor, without country, only my moist sails afloat in that tremendous ocean of my tears ,,,,
— Camelia C.
The aroma of the food may not have any connotation with it's taste and the nutrients it contains
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, Distinctive Footprints of Life: Where Are You Heading Towards?
I don't know why wicked places generally look wicked. You'd think they'd look nice, to fool people, but they hardly ever do.
— Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last?
Elegance is the perfect disguise for our violent nature—a mask so convincing that we often fool ourselves the moment we don it.
— Ashim Shanker, Only the Deplorable
To be a man is to bring together that which you should be and that which you are. Deception is darkness.
— Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife
He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.
— Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit: Volume 1
Maybe that's what love is. Giving others the power to hurt you and trusting they'll use it to heal you instead.
— C.J. Redwine
Talking to her is like coming home and finding the furniture in every room rearranged. The same pieces are there, the same sense of comfort, but nothing is exactly the where you'd expect.
— C.J. Redwine
In war, bullets; in love, deceptions kill us.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
..deceivers must expect to be deceived.
— Michael Frayn, The Russian Interpreter
Forget math and peotry. Especially poetry.
— C.J. Redwine
Death is an insatiable creature with greedy hands.
— C.J. Redwine
This explained to me--and I suppose, forgave me--my inability to see the face of this man, because whoever must deceive us in order to live will by necessity far exceed the skill of ordinary men, who are as much tempted by the desire to be honest as they are plagued by guilt and shame when they have broken faith.
— Michael Ennis, The Malice of Fortune
Just because you believe in fairies doesn't mean you have to believe everything they say!-Petra Godfellow
— J. Aleksandr Wootton, The Eighth Square
I'm honor-bound not to struggle with this since you just retrieved it all by yourself. Please do me the courtesy of pretending this is hard for you as well.
— C.J. Redwine
The thing is, Ms. Embers, they aren’t exactly on our side.
— Embee, Tess Embers
Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?
— Abraham Joshua Heschel
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
— William Shakespeare
Some women are good-looking … until they change their hairstyle.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end.
— Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Do not be disingenuous with me, Colonel Graff. Americans are quite apt at playing stupid when they choose to, but I am not to be deceived.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war was floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind in the water.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
87.—Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. [A maxim, adds Aimé Martin, "Which may enter into the code of a vulgar rogue, but one is astonished to find it in a moral treatise." Yet we have scriptural authority for it: "Deceiving and being deceived."—2 TIM. iii. 13.]
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims
The power of His gentleness..In the Eye of Deception - This is my story.
— Nikki Rosen, In The Eye Of Deception: A True Story
Some people in your lifeTouch you so very deeplyThat you drown totally in that depth.
— Amit Abraham
Kitsch is the most pernicious of all prisons. The bars are covered with the gold of simplistic, unreal feelings, so that you take them for the pillars of a palace.
— Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
The film is the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter plays tricks on man.
— Walter Benjamin
To deceive oneself is worse than to deceive others." These harsh words pierced me to the core.
— Shinichi Suzuki, Nurtured by Love: The Classic Approach to Talent Education
I have led you down a road of deception just to correct you and make you look like an uneducated ass
— Ashley Newell
Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.
— Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep
I love that she loves me a 10, on a 5-point scale. Well, I know it’s a 5-point scale, though I asked her on a 1-100 scale.  
— Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.
allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an innocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them).
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.' McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. 'But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,' he said, and a smile spread across his face as easy as a politician's lie.
— R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree
Deception was an inherent trait of intelligent beings. Even his love, in her ample ardor, would weave him a guilty lie for his own good. And he treasured her just as well for those tales he was sure she'd already spun.
— Darrell Drake, Everautumn
Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.
— Meister Eckhart
Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Death is the protector of life and life is the process of death.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.
— Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth.
— Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
At a certain point talk about 'essence' and 'oneness' and the universal becomes more tautological than inquisitive.
— Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
The shadow of scepticism is dispelled in the light of real knowledge.
— Etienne de L'Amour, The Lucian Uprising
You cannot be a great writer in a shop where words are sold in tens and twenties.
— Rick Aster
I have become so accustomed to think “scientifically” that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.
— P.D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe
Do not let your intellect steer you away from what your eyes have seen. Neither should you let it deny what your higher powers have perceived.
— Ashavan
When shall I get to kiss thee?’ I asked.‘By all means you can forever ask,’ she answered.‘Your lips ask a heavy price,’ I said.‘It’s a fair exchange of one so fair,’ she said.‘What lips are worthy for your mouth and lips?’ I asked.‘Only the discerning can this secret know,’ she answered.‘Don’t worship idols, be with the Truth,’ I said.‘In the Way of Love, both are allowed,’ she said.I said, ‘The tavern helps to heal the heart.’‘Blessed are those who heal the lonely heart,’ she answered.‘It’s not religion, the priestly robe, the wine,’ I said.‘But to the gnostic both lead to the Divine,’ she answered.‘What use to an old man of youthful lips?’ I asked.‘By such sweet kissing, he grows young!’ she answered.‘When shall the bridegroom embrace the bride?’‘When the stars are that way inclined.’I said, ‘The prayer of Hafiz is for His glory.’‘This is the prayer of angels too, in heaven,’ she answered.
— Hafiz Shirazi
Trust God that you are where you are meant to be.
— St. Teresa Of Avila, The Interior Castle
God is the vessel of love that gives wings to our prayers
— Mimi Novic
—and I say you still haven't answered my question, Father Bleu.""Haven't I, dear lady? I thought I stated that death is merely the beginning 
— John Jakes, Orbit 3
…mysticism –perhaps the main aberration of the human mind.
— Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End
Similarly, it does not matter what the mind is doing once you identify it as a fool. If there is somebody very stupid around you who goes on blabbering, do you not learn to simply ignore him and carry on with your work? That is all you need to do.
— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudevuru
The most incredible thing is that you can know everything you wish to know with your eyes closed.
— Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
Beryl: Beryl is a warm gemstone which develops, between the third hour and midday, from the foam of water when the sun burns it severely. Its power is thus more from air and water than from fire, but nevertheless it has some of the properties of fire. And if a man has drunk or eaten poison, then he should place a little beryl in spring water and drink it at once. Continue for five days drinking it once a day while fasting, and the poison will foam up through vomiting, or it will pass out of him through the rear.
— Hildegard of Bingen, Selected Writings
We are apart so that I will know the joy of being with you again. Take care of yourself, wherever you are. Take care of yourself, wherever you are.
— Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach
There can only be two contexts of your life. Either you are the author of your life, or He (the Creator) is the author of your life. People who feel that their creation is the responsibility of the Creator, find opportunities unexpectedly. Those who feel that their lives are their own, have to fashion their own means.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
In the bosom of success lie not delights but deprivations
— Wasif Ali Wasif
The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan.
— Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism
Man is a little world--a microcosm inside the great universe. Like a fetus, he is suspended, by all his three spirits, in the matrix of the macrocosmos; and while his terrestrial body is in constant sympathy with its parent earth, his astral soul lives in unison with the sidereal anima mundi. He is in it, as it is in him, for the world-pervading element fills all space, and is space itself, only shoreless and infinite. As to his third spirit, the divine, what is it but an infinitesimal ray, one of the countless radiations proceeding directly from the Highest Cause--the Spiritual Light of the World? This is the trinity of organic and inorganic nature--the spiritual and the physical, which are three in one, and of which Proclus says that 'The first monad is the Eternal God; the second, eternity; the third, the paradigm, or pattern of the universe;' the three constituting the Intelligible Triad.
— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled
Except Him, whatever understood,O Bedil~ love made me forget.
— Bedil, Bedil: Selected Poems
Why do people kill others just like them with such ferocity simply because they worship a different god? What harm were they doing? People suffer in these wars and dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions even lose their lives. Whatever happened to the survival instinct? One could just about understand the violent battle for wealth or territory but how are we supposed to understand the battle for a belief?
— Vadim Zeland, Reality transurfing. Steps I-V
You know how long's the universe. It's seven million freeways side by side. You know how high. So high the moon just falls. But little punks, you still know the hardcore of the universe. It's cause you're hardcore too. You're made of pure universe, under your bones. And nothing ever starts shit by meaning to. We meant to break down the amerikan dream throwing bottles. All we broke was bottles. What worked was one stolen handful of flax seed. All ages shows in the highschool parkade, and the keys to the bandroom door. Their dream was a joke anyway. What worked was a nother joke.
— Noah  Wareness
As the river enters into the ocean,so my heart touches Thee.
— Kabir, Songs of Kabir
Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,  Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.  English Translation. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange directions.  One who jumps into it drowns,  And one who drowns, gets across.
— Amir Khusrau, The Writings Of Amir Khusrau :700 years after the prophet : a 13th-14th century legend of Indian-sub-continent
What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.
— Elie Wiesel, Conversations with Elie Wiesel
Mystic grimoirs, walking corpses... I'm so far out of my wheelhouse that I might as well be on the moon.
— Mark Waid, Daredevil, Volume 7
The embodiment of his mystic precepts, he appeared at any given moment to be on the verge of an amazing disintegration, his particular complex of atoms ready to go shooting off into the great void like a burst of fireworks.
— Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
No martyr is among ye now | Whom you can call your own | So go on your way accordingly | But know you’re not alone.
— Bob Dylan, The Lyrics: Since 1962
It's strange to be here, the mystery never leaves you alone".
— John O'Donohue
Make haste to Love.
— Hadewijch, Hadewijch: The Complete Works
So high is my Lord’s palace, my heart trembles to mount its stairs: yet I must not be shy, if I would enjoy His love.
— Kabir
Mysticism is like pure science
—  it has no use. Mysticism is just the human longing to know… Occult is not science. Occult is just technology.
When we talk of "exploring the mystical," we are not trying to dig into creation, because if you dig into creation, it will only get more complex. It will not bring clarity; it will only bring more complexity. That is why the yogis looked in a different direction. We looked inward. If you look inward, a different dimension opens up. Now instead of things getting more complex, you get to clarity. It is because of this that we say that those who look inward have a third eye. They see things that others cannot see. They have brought a new clarity to life.
— Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
In searching for himself, he had come to understand that he was defined by selflessness
— Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams
You can convert this human system into absolute receptivity, where you can perceive life in ways that you have never believed possible. If you keep all your ideas, emotions and your nonsense aside, maybe you can take a step, move one inch. One little step existentially is worth more than all the scriptures that you can read on the planet. One little step is far more important than all the philosophies that you can spout.
— Sadhguru
See, when we say a "spiritual seeker," unfortunately most people assume that he is God-oriented. A spiritual seeker is not God-oriented; if Devil is the chief of existence, he wants to know that. We want to know what is true; we are not interested in proving our belief systems, because we don't have any.
— Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
I am not here to speak the Truth. I am here just to give you a method to perceive it.
— Sadhguru, Of Mystics & Mistakes
For the New Age community, 'ancient' knowledge is always considered unimpeachable and unimprovable, just as a diverse range of beliefs from Eastern mysticism to UFOs, energy dowsing to cryptozoology, are - though mutually contradictory - unquestionably accepted in the name of open-mindedness.
— Mark Crutchfield, The Last Best Gift: Eye Witnesses to the Celebrity Sabbath Massacre
In such uncommon longings, hidden in plain sight in our lives, does God call us.
— James     Martin
When you start to notice the mystical, the mystical will start to notice you.
— Dacha Avelin
Experience God, don't raise a wall of dogmas between you and Him.
— Stefan Emunds
In his numerous works, especially in The Idealist View of Life and Eastern Religions and Western Thought, the great Eastern Philosopher, Professor Radhakrishnan, advocates the necessity for the revival of the deeply spiritual mystical experience which is the basis of all religions and which is expressed in a pure form in Hinduism. He says: “In spite of all appearances to the contrary, we discern in the present unrest the gradual dawning of a great light, a converging life-endeavour, a growing realisation that there is a secret spirit in which we are all one, and of which humanity is the highest vehicle on earth, and an increasing desire to live out this knowledge and establish a kingdom of spirit on earth.” (Eastern Religions and Western Thought, p. 33). “The different religions have now come together, and if they are not to continue in a state of conflict or competition, they must develop a spirit of comprehension which will break down prejudice and misunderstanding and bind them together as varied expressions of a single truth. Such a spirit characterised the development of Hinduism, which has not been interrupted for nearly fifty centuries.
— Tirupattur Ramaseshayyer Venkatachala Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of Madhyamika System
Mysticism is the acquired immunodeficiency of regional ontologies
—  one catches it through unprotected thought intercourse with the stirred-up concept of the infinite.
By music I mean the ‘spirit of the game,’ which is what all spirituality ultimately points to — ‘I hear the voice’ (of Nature, God, beauty, truth, love…). Hear it and move onto or into. The easiest way to do that is to notice and invest in whatever it is that provokes wonderment. You could call this coming back to mysticism as a way of life. We were all already there as children.
— Darrell Calkins
Love has an enormous spectrum of expression and impact. At the far end, it begins to unravel and move away from subjective experience and personal preference. It becomes pure intent, something that no longer tickles our desires, but fulfills the deeper needs of each circumstance we’re in.
— Darrell Calkins
Sometimes, down in the subway, a train Maxine's riding on will slowly be overtaken by a local or an express on the other track, and in the darkness of the tunnel, as the windows of the other train move slowly past, the lighted panels appear one by one, like a series of fortune-telling cards being deal and slid in front of her. The Scholar, The Unhoused, The Warrior Thief, The Haunted Woman... After a while Maxine has come to understand that the faces framed in these panels are precisely those out of all the city millions she must in the hour be paying most attention to, in particular those whose eyes actually meet her own - they are the day's messengers from whatever the Beyond has for a Third World, where the days are assembled one by one under non-union conditions. Each messenger carrying the props required for their character, shopping bags, books, musical instruments, arrived here out of darkness, bound again into darkness, with only a minute to deliver the intelligence Maxine needs. At some point naturally she begins to wonder if she might not be performing the same role for some face looking back out another window at her.
— Thomas Pynchon
A monk was told that his father had died. He said to the messenger, "Do not blaspheme. My Father cannot die.
— Benedicta Ward
Time’s violence rends the soul
—  by the rent eternity enters.
We would – or at least we should – take upon ourselves the ultimate task of our poet: to seek the face of God.
— Anthony M. Esolen
In the heart of the mystic lies a deep longing to be reunited with the ancient ways, coupled with a yearning to be able to show others what she can see. She wants to show others what she can see. Sadly, more often than not, others do not have the eyes with which to see, or, their eyes are blinded by bondage and fear. She is ever alone and yet ever accompanied by a thousand leagues of beauties and voices, that this mystic existence can only be described as a thorny rose— the mystic is the one who reaches for the rose because she knows that those who crave the rose must not fear the thorns.
— C. JoyBell C.
They don't think up questions like that on the basis of what might be true
—  they concoct the questions on the basis of what might be sensational if it just happened to be true.
WE say then- that the Cause of all, which is above all, is neither without being, nor without life----nor with- out reason, nor without mind, nor is a body----nor has shape----nor form----nor quality, or quantity, or bulk----nor is in a place----nor is seen----nor has sensible contact----nor perceives, nor is perceived, by the senses----nor has disorder and confusion, as being vexed by earthly passions,----nor is powerless, as being subject to casualties of sense,----nor is in need of light;----neither is It, nor has It, change, or decay, or division, or deprivation, or flux,----or any other of the objects of sense.
— Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
TRIAD supernal, both super-God and super-good, Guardian of the Theosophy of Christian men, direct us aright to the super-unknown and super-brilliant and highest summit of the mystic Oracles, where the simple and absolute a!nd changeless mysteries of theology lie hidden within the super-luminous gloom of the silence, revealing hidden things, which in its deepest darkness shines above the most super-brilliant, and in the altogether impalpable and invisible, fills to overflowing the eyeless minds with glories of surpassing beauty. This then be my prayer; but thou, O dear Timothy, by thy persistent commerce with the mystic visions, leave behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts, and all objects of sense and intelligence, and all things not being and being, and be raised aloft unknowingly to the union, as far' as attainable, with Him Who is above every essence and knowledge. For by the resistless and absolute ecstasy in all purity, from thyself and all, thou wilt be carried on high, to the superessential ray of the Divine darkness, when thou hast cast away all, and become free from all.
— Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
It would be pleasant to believe that the age of pessimism is now coming to a close, and that its end is marked by the same author who marked its beginning: Aldous Huxley. After thirty years of trying to find salvation in mysticism, and assimilating the Wisdom of the East, Huxley published in 1962 a new constructive utopia, The Island. In this beautiful book he created a grand synthesis between the science of the West and the Wisdom of the East, with the same exceptional intellectual power which he displayed in his Brave New World. (His gaminerie is also unimpaired; his close union of eschatology and scatology will not be to everybody's tastes.) But though his Utopia is constructive, it is not optimistic; in the end his island Utopia is destroyed by the sort of adolescent gangster nationalism which he knows so well, and describes only too convincingly.This, in a nutshell, is the history of thought about the future since Victorian days. To sum up the situation, the sceptics and the pessimists have taken man into account as a whole; the optimists only as a producer and consumer of goods. The means of destruction have developed pari passu with the technology of production, while creative imagination has not kept pace with either.The creative imagination I am talking of works on two levels. The first is the level of social engineering, the second is the level of vision. In my view both have lagged behind technology, especially in the highly advanced Western countries, and both constitute dangers.
— Dennis Gabor, Inventing The Future
A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier stages, although there are likely some significant differences in 3rd tier, given its inherent conjunction of structures and states.
— Ken Wilber, The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
Nourish yourself so you can feed others.
— Doobie Shemer, Sprouted Soul: Whole-Souled Poems
TODAY, I can choose what affects me, to not be afraid, to not let this break-up depress me, to look at mistakes as learning experiences, to be happy, to feel loved, TODAY I can choose....
— Doobie Shemer, Sprouted Soul: Whole-Souled Poems
A far cicada rings high and clear over the river’s heavy wash. Morning glory, a lone dandelion, cassia, orchids. So far from the nearest sea, I am taken aback by the sight of a purple land crab, like a relict of the ancient days when the Indian subcontinent, adrift on the earth’s mantle, moved northward to collide with the Asian landmass, driving these marine rocks, inch by inch, five miles into the skies. The rise of the Himalaya, begun in the Eocene, some fifty million years ago, is still continuing: an earthquake in 1959 caused mountains to fall into the rivers and changed the course of the great Brahmaputra, which comes down out of Tibet through northeastern India to join the Ganges near its delta at the Bay of Bengal.
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Mysticism was merely virility in a state of liquidation
—  sperm that had gone bad.
The ancient sages of Kashmir Shaivism did not look for the truth only in logic and intellectual speculation. They relied much more on their experiences during deep yogic states to guide them in understanding and clarifying age-old philosophical dilemmas. They discovered the Absolute within themselves and found that they were one with it. They studied the Self that lay beyond the mind and the ego, and found that It was divine, creative energy. God was not some distant ruler or some inert entity. These sages realized and recognized that He was within everything, was the vitality of life itself, and was always the one transcendent Reality as well. In this way Kashmir Shaivites taught the principle of theistic absolutism.For centuries Indian philosophers have been debating whether this world is real or an illusion. In the process of watching the unfolding of their own creative energy during meditation, the sages of Kashmir found the source of all creation, and witnessed how everything in this universe evolves from this one absolute Reality into manifestation which is also real. Because all creation exists within the Absolute, they established the principle of spiritual realism.— B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. x
— Balajinnatha Pandita, Specific Principles of Kashmir Saivism
We wish to become one thing or another, rather we wish to become everything and in this pursuit of becoming everything we only end up becoming idiots.
— Wasif Ali Wasif, Dil Darya Samandar / دل دریا سمندر
This life is but a dream. A state of sleep but how unfortunate that man's eyes open only when they are about to be closed (forever).
— Wasif Ali Wasif, Dil Darya Samandar / دل دریا سمندر
It is not long before those who are obedient in service obtain command.
— Saadi
In order to spend out our time (life) we sell some of this time. We work for someone, we labour. In freedom we do slavery.
— Wasif Ali Wasif, Dil Darya Samandar / دل دریا سمندر
For all its complexity, however, astrology remains fundamentally simple. It offers a time-honored system of symbols that sum up key aspects of human life while providing profound insights and practical guidance.
— Anne M. Nordhaus-Bike, Follow the Sun: A Simple Way to Use Astrology for Living in Harmony
When one opens themselves to spiritual perception, the world becomes a magical place.
— Patricia L. Meek
The sword is a handle onto the Way of the world that is offering itself to you. If you are willful it will weigh a ton and wear you out. If you lose focus it will cut open your hand. Mindfulness keeps your mind on the blade; and if you are mindful you will not think about the future or past, there will be no blocks to the flow of Tao, and the Way of the world will flow through the sword and through you. You will become the sword of the world.
— Doc Pruyne, Persimmon
The most 'authoritative' accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, 'like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John.
— Frank Butcher, Atheist Responses to Religious Arguments
From this perspective, we were all divine Shakespeares, creating and playing the roles of muscled heroes and conniving villains, pious saints and debauched sinners, corrupt CEOs and disinterested temp workers.
— Jonathan Talat Phillips, The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic
He who has no light in his heart, what will he gain from the festival of lamps.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
When the child is ill, the mother will know how to pray.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
In reality, every reality is a veil over reality.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
As long as man was in the moolight he desired to reach the moon…there was bliss in the moonlight but the moon itself was distant. Moonlight was near but man longed for the moon…man reached the moon but there he was without moonlight. If one reaches the moon one does not find moonlight any longer and if one is in moonlight one does not find the moon. It is a strange fact that one is only because of the other…one is a sign of the other yet both are forever separate. If the Beloved is the Moon, moonlight is His remembrance. When the Beloved is present His remembrance is not and when His remembrance is present the Beloved is not. Proximity to one is distance from the other, Union with one is separation from the other. Thus union is hidden in every separation and separation in every union.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
God created hand, head, and heart; the hand for the deed, the head for the world, the heart for mysticism.
— Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism
The ocean sleeps. The ocean wakes. And the waking of the ocean is the waking of the soul. At midnight wakefulness springs from within the ocean.
— Wasif Ali Wasif, Dil Darya Samandar / دل دریا سمندر
Life is not only Newton, it is also Milton.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.
— Dan Simmons, Hyperion
Do not destroy anybody’s peace. You will find peace.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
In love, there is no distinction between success and failure. If love remains then even separation is union otherwise even union is separation.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
It wasn't a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion
The period before the dawn of knowledge is called the age of darkness.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
One who has no beloved in the country can never love the country.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
All mystics have had psychotic breakdowns, although not all psychotics are mystics.
— James Curcio, Join My Cult!
But personally, I think [sainthood] is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion
The world is ancient, but it has not lost its newness.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
A man is happy who is happy with his Naseeb(allotted portion).
— Wasif Ali Wasif
Sleep is the boundary between being/existence and not-being/non-existence.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
Investigation after declaration of submission leads astray.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
Yet have I oft been beaten in the field, And sometimes hurt," said I, "but scorn'd to yield." He smiled and said: "Alas! thou dost not see, My son, how great a flame's prepared for thee.
— Francesco Petrarca
If a society has no moral foundations then success is a threat. Every successful person thinks everyone else is a failure, and this is the proof of failure. Conquering the world and dying empty-handed on foreign shores is a paradox of such success.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
We in the West regard the universe as a creation of God; like an invention or a product. After he created the universe, God set himself to oversee it and manage it. We see God as our boss. He created the universe, he is present in it, he manages every part of it, but he is still separate from it. It's like he installed video cameras all over the universe, so he can see everything that happens, and he can cause this or that to happen, but he is not a part of what happens. The Eastern view is very different. To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is "The Great Unknown Outcome." Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, and God is really just playing around.
— Warren Sharpe, Philosophy for the Serious Heretic: The Limitations of Belief and the Derivation of Natural Moral Principles
The dead can read tears.
— Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings
When the eye becomes the heart, the heart becomes the eye.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
Even now one rarely hears of people achieving great things unless they first stumble in some respect.
— Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Treatises, Vol 2
The business and method of mysticism is love.
— Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: The Nature And Development Of Spiritual Consciousness
If grass grows and withers, it can only mean that it is part of a greater thing, which is even more real; not that the grass is less real than it looks. St. Thomas (Aquinas) has a really logical right to say, in the words of the modern mystic, A. E.: "I begin by the grass to be bound again to the Lord.
— G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.
— Evelyn Underhill
A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I know.” A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general.
— Richard Rohr
As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire.
— Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism; and, Abba: Meditations on the Lord's Prayer
Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception—this “ordinary contemplation,” as the specialists call it—is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician.
— Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism; and, Abba: Meditations on the Lord's Prayer
The Innocent Mage is come , and we stand at the beginning of the end of everything
— Karen Miller, The Innocent Mage
I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand
— Oscar Wilde, Criticism and Reviews
We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.
— Theodore Roosevelt
You give because the love of God has been poured into your heart, not to satisfy the law.
— Sherry K. White, Walking in the Father's Riches: The Prosperity of Sonship
Prosperity suits some people, and they blossom best in a glow of sunshine; others need the shade, and are the sweeter for a touch of frost.
— Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys
Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge enough for more; Fate was not mine, nor am I Fate's: Souls know no conquerors.
— John Dryden
The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me
—  my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
Magick, in essence, is the ability to communicate to the universe what you want in an effective way, so that the universe can then respond and create what you desire.
— Christopher Penczak, The Witch's Coin: Prosperity and Money Magick
Maxim 31: Only cheaters prosper.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
— Howard Tayler
private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it.
— Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
The poor man is poor because he will not heed instruction.
— Fred C. White
Finances flow along the lines of relationships in the kingdom of God.
— Fred C. White, Walking in the Father's Riches: The Prosperity of Sonship
Prosperity of wicked men runs like a torrent past, and soon is spent.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
If you want to prosper, prosper God.
— Sherry K. White, Walking in the Father's Riches: The Prosperity of Sonship
If Verity's sins were knives, quick and vicious, then Prosperity's were poison. Slow, insidious, but just as deadly.
— Victoria Schwab, Our Dark Duet
If you want to be prosperous begin to sow into your abilities, gifting’s, talents, self-development and self-education
— Sunday Adelaja
Appa enjoys our current prosperity with considerable hesitation, as if it were undeserved. He’s given to quoting a proverb that says wealth shouldn’t strike suddenly like a visitation, but instead grow gradually like a tree.
— Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar
Only when you cultivate your talents and gifts you prosper
— Sunday Adelaja
Only after you have qualified yourself, you should then say that God will prosper your labor.
— Sunday Adelaja
reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them.
— Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty
Miracle focus messages compels masses to think that the process of production is not necessary for prosperity
— Sunday Adelaja
Messages focused on miracle will breed in the mind of people the mentality that production is not necessary for prosperity
— Sunday Adelaja
Trying to get prosperity through laying of hands is running after shadows
— Sunday Adelaja
Trying to get prosperity through prophet offering is running after shadows
— Sunday Adelaja
Prosperity only comes as a result of production
— Sunday Adelaja
We can change the world if we restore humanity to businesses.
— kamil Toume
We experience prosperity in our relationships as we learn to love, forgive, and receive love and forgiveness.
— Paul Silway
The level of our submission to God will determine our success and prosperity.
— Sunday Adelaja
Financial prosperity is impossible without constant planning and management of money.
— Sunday Adelaja
God gives prosperity only to those who personally know him and are obedient to His will.
— Sunday Adelaja
Prosperity without God is like committing suicide.
— Sunday Adelaja
Without prosperity the fullness of human happiness is not possible.
— Sunday Adelaja
Everything that we have in this earthly life should serve the Kingdom of God.
— Sunday Adelaja
What a person cares about most of all determines the quality of his life.
— Sunday Adelaja
I had always been appalled by the variation of the gospel of prosperity
— Sunday Adelaja
The bread of such a nation (living godly) shall be in constant supply. Talking of abundance, provision, prosperity, surplus etc.
— Sunday Adelaja
Preparation position you for prosperity.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
We are all the playground of angels and demons.
— Alexis  Hall
I can't promise you that money will bring you happiness, because it didn't do it for me.But the lack of it, for sure, will bring you unhappiness.Money buys you options and security. Without options and security your soul cannot soar and be free.From my Upcoming book
— Celso Cukierkorn
Pico Mundo is a prosperous town. But no degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
The best things in this world are meant to be fought for." -Kearney
— Brittany L. Engels, Kaptito Kero
Sometimes we think we have a great prosperity but then we suddenly encounter the storm.
— Jan Jansen
4. God reveals to humanity, through His Word, the shortest route to success, prosperity andwell-being.
— Sunday Adelaja
When you recognize the many types of abundance in your life, more abundance will flow to you through all levels of your life and amongst all of the people in your life.
— Cheryl Hamada, The Goddess Intuitive Group Guidebook
A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb -- if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.
— John Shirley, BioShock: Rapture
The idea of labor, of hard work, leading to increased productivity was so novel, so radical, in the overall span of Western history that most ordinary people, most of those who labored, could scarcely believe what was happening to them. Labor had been so long thought to be the natural and inevitable consequence of necessity and poverty that most people still associated it with slavery and servitude. Therefore any possibility of oppression, any threat to the colonists' hard earned prosperity, any hint of reducing them to the povery of other nations, was especially frightening; for it seemed likely to slide them back into the traditional status of servants or slaves, into the older world where labor was merely a painful necessity and not a source of prosperity.
— Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
— Winston S. Churchill
The Question of How? When you are writing goals, or even thinking about achieving big things in life, the question that will come to your mind is “how?” You may think, “I don’t have enough education or money, and my health isn’t good enough. How will I ever be able to achieve these goals?”These thoughts alone can discourage you from going any further. However, take this simple example: Imagine you are standing in front of your refrigerator and would like to open the door. What do you do? Do you think about how to do it? Do you worry about whether or not your muscles will respond and help you open the door? Unless you, unfortunately, have a physical disability, you are able to open the refrigerator door, having full faith that you can do it. Just as you may not be aware of the complexities of the way your body works to allow you to you to open that refrigerator door without thought, so the Universe has provided you with everything in abundance, and a continuous flow of prosperity can come your way. Only when you accept that it is possible, you can and will live the life that you dream about.
— Zeeshan Raza, U Turn Your Life: 5 Simple Steps to Achieve Success – Starting Now!