Quotes on Ifs

If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, the whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.

If you are an enemy to your own mind, other people have to become enemies too, sooner or later. Until you understand, until you can love the thoughts that appear in your mind, then you can love the rest of us. You work with the projector -the mind - not the projected world. I can't really love you until I question the mind that thinks it sees you outside itself . . .

We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' What is that, grandmother?' To understand other people.' Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.

We say that the faces of coming generations are looking up from the earth. So when you put your feet down, you put them down very carefully - because there are generations coming one after the other. If you think in these terms, then you'll walk a lot more carefully, be more respectful of this earth.

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.

If God is supposed to be merciful,' [Arthur] retorted, 'I don't see why He shouldn't allow people to stumble into heaven, just as well as climb there

Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself. Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn't worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury... but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'd find it a lot more interesting.

If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire.

If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy.

If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.

If your virtue is especially radiant, it can be possible to open a pathway to the subtle realm and receive these celestial teachings directly from the immortals.

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.

Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment, of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

Each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.

This [a state militia system] appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.

When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem

Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table [the Constitution] gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor.

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone.

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.