Patañjali > Quotes

“Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.”
― Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
― Patanjali

“For those who have an intense urge for Spirit and wisdom, it sits
near them, waiting.”
― Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer's own form.”
― Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Everything is sorrow for the wise.”
― Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“It is only when the correct practice is followed for a long time, without interruptions and with a quality of positive attitude and eagerness, that it can succeed.”
― Patañjali, Yoga-Sutras (Collections Spiritualites)

“Sloth is the great enemy -- the inspirer of cowardice, irresolution, self-pitying grief, and trivial, hairsplitting doubts. Sloth may also be a psychological cause of sickness. It is tempting to relax from our duties, take refuge in ill-health and hide under a nice warm blanket.”
― Patanjali

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations; your consciousness expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
― Patanjali

“Here is, in truth, the whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love, and needs no harsh vibration to convince it of true being.”
― Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: the Book of the Spiritual Man

“Distractions arise from habitual thought patterns when practice is intermittent.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Life cannot be known by the “mind,” its secrets cannot be learned through the “mind.” The proof is, the ceaseless strife and contradiction of opinion among those who trust in the mind. Much less can the “mind” know itself, the more so, because it is pervaded by the illusion that it truly knows, truly is.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“When one is confirmed in celibacy, spiritual vigor is gained.”
― Patanjali

“With this truth bearing light will begin a new life. Old unwanted impressions are discarded and we are protected from the damaging effects of new experiences.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali

“The purpose of life, therefore, is the realizing of that prophecy; the unveiling of the immortal man; the birth of the spiritual from the psychical, whereby we enter our divine inheritance and come to inhabit Eternity. This is, indeed, salvation, the purpose of all true religion, in all times. Patanjali”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“The great secret is this: it is not enough to have intuitions; we must act on them; we must live them.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Every morning put your mind into your heart and stand in the presence of God all the day long.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“35. The personal self seeks to feast on life, through a failure to perceive the distinction between the personal self and the spiritual man. All personal experience really exists for the sake of another: namely, the spiritual man. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on experience for the sake of the Self, comes a knowledge of the spiritual man. The divine ray of the Higher Self, which is eternal, impersonal and abstract, descends into life, and forms a personality, which, through the stress and storm of life, is hammered into a definite and concrete self-conscious individuality. The problem is, to blend these two powers, taking the eternal and spiritual being of the first, and blending with it, transferring into it, the self-conscious individuality of the second; and thus bringing to life a third being, the spiritual man, who is heir to the immortality of his father, the Higher Self, and yet has the self-conscious, concrete individuality of his other parent, the personal self. This is the true immaculate conception, the new birth from above, "conceived of the Holy Spirit." Of this new birth it is said: "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit: ye must be born again." Rightly understood, therefore, the whole life of the personal man is for another, not for himself. He exists only to render his very life and all his experience for the building up of the spiritual man. Only through failure to see this, does he seek enjoyment for himself, seek to secure the feasts of life for himself; not understanding that he must live for the other, live sacrificially, offering both feasts and his very being on the altar; giving himself as a contribution for the building of the spiritual man. When he does understand this, and lives for the Higher Self, setting his heart and thought on the Higher Self, then his sacrifice bears divine fruit, the spiritual man is built up, consciousness awakes in him, and he comes fully into being as a divine and immortal individuality.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: the Book of the Spiritual Man

“OM: the symbol of the Three in One, the three worlds in the Soul; the three times, past, present, future, in Eternity; the three Divine Powers, Creation, Preservation, Transformation, in the one Being; the three essences, immortality, omniscience, joy, in the one Spirit. This is the Word, the Symbol, of the Master and Lord, the perfected Spiritual Man.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Be happy for those who are happy,
be compassionate toward those who are unhappy,
be delighted for those who are virtuous,
and be indifferent toward the wicked.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“19. The Mind is not self-luminous, since it can be seen as an object. This is a further step toward overthrowing the tyranny of the "mind": the psychic nature of emotion and mental measuring. This psychic self, the personality, claims to be absolute, asserting that life is for it and through it; it seeks to impose on the whole being of man its narrow, materialistic, faithless view of life and the universe; it would clip the wings of the soaring Soul. But the Soul dethrones the tyrant, by perceiving and steadily affirming that the psychic self is no true self at all, not self-luminous, but only an object of observation, watched by the serene eyes of the Spiritual Man.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: the Book of the Spiritual Man

“Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse. 4.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: the Book of the Spiritual Man

“Everything that we are, is the result of habit. That gives us consolation, because if it is only habit, we can make and unmake it at any time. The samshara is left by these vibrations passing out of our mind, each one of them leaving its result. Our character is the sum-total of these marks, and as per as some particular wave prevails one takes that tone. If good prevail one becomes good, if wickedness takes over, one becomes wicked, if joyfulness, one becomes happy. The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits.”
― Patañjali, Patanjali Yoga Sutras

“This is true of the physical powers, and of those which dwell in the higher vestures. There must be, first, purity; as the blood must be pure, before one can attain to physical health. But absence of impurity is not in itself enough, else would many nerveless ascetics of the cloisters rank as high saints. There is needed, further, a positive fire of the will; a keen vital vigour for the physical powers, and something finer, purer, stronger, but of kindred essence, for the higher powers. The fire of genius is something more than a phrase, for there can be no genius without the celestial fire of the awakened spiritual will.”
― Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“La amistad, la compasión y la alegría clarifican y tranquilizan la mente. Deben practicarse tanto en la felicidad como en la desgracia, tanto con quienes nos ayudan como con aquellos que nos perjudican.”
― Patañjali, LOS YOGASUTRAS DE PATANJALI

“We must have these four sorts of ideas. We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful towards those that are in misery; when people are happy we ought to be happy, and to the wicked we must be indifferent.”
― Patañjali, Patanjali Yoga Sutras

“If all a man's faculties can be concentrated on one point, it will be like a spike; a blunt object cannot penetrate an obstacle, it has to be sharpened, and then it can easily thrust its way through anything.”
― Patañjali

“Reason leaves us at a point quite indecisive; we may reason all our lives, as the world has been doing for thousands of years, and the result is that we find we are incompetent to prove or disprove the facts of religion. What we perceive directly we take as the basis, and upon that basis we reason. So it is obvious that reasoning has to run within these bounds of perception. It can never go beyond: the whole scope of realisation, therefore, is beyond sense perception. The yogis say that man can go beyond his direct sense perception, and beyond his reason also. Man has in him the faculty, the power, of transcending his intellect even, and that power is in every being, every creature. By the practice of Yoga that power is aroused, and then man transcends the ordinary limits of reason, and directly perceives things which are beyond all reason.”
― Patañjali, Patanjali Yoga Sutras

“La raison d'être du monde est d'être source d'expériences multiples et d'ainsi nous mener ultimement à la libération.”
― Patañjali, Yoga Sutras