Theodore > Theodore's Quotes

“Both Christ and Buddha saw the passage as one of suffering, and basically found identical ways out. What they discovered and revealed to us was that each of us has within himself or herself a “stillpoint” – comparable, perhaps to the eye of a cyclone, a spot or center of calm, imperturbability, and non-movement. Buddha articulated this central eye in negative terms as “emptiness” or “void”, a refuge from the swirling cyclone of endless suffering. Christ articulated the eye in more positive terms as the “Kingdom of God” or the “Spirit within”, a place of refuge and salvation from a suffering self.

For both of them, the easy out was first to find that stillpoint and then, by attaching ourselves to it, by becoming one with it, to find a stabilizing, balanced anchor in our lives. After that, the cyclone is gradually drawn into the eye, and the suffering self comes to an end. And when there is no longer a cyclone, there is also no longer an eye.”
― Bernadette Roberts, The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays On The Path

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.

[Verse 223]”
― Siddhārtha Gautama, The Dhammapada

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“At night I sit in my room and read the Bible.
In the distance, the sea roars.

Then I lay awake for a long time
and think of the quiet, pale man from Nazareth.”
― Joseph Goebbels, Michael

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
― Socrates

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo

“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
― Zhuangzi, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu

“One who looks outside, dreams. One who looks inside, awakens.”
― Carl Jung

“The Magician represents the man who has attained harmony and equilibrium between the spontaneity of the unconscious (in the sense given to it by C. G. Jung) and the deliberate action of the conscious (in the sense of “I” or ego consciousness).”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

“Silence is the indispensable climate for all revelation; noise renders it absolutely impossible.”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

“One need not fear the devil, but rather the perverse tendencies in oneself!”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda

“We bow with respect and gratitude before all the great human souls of the past and present - the sages, the righteous, the prophets, the saints of all continents and all epochs throughout the whole of human history - and we are ready to learn from them all that they wish and are able to teach, but we have only one sole Initiator or Lord; we are obliged to reiterate this for the sake of certainty.”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

“The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them; they can inflict on them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies succeeding one another without interruption in the bosom of a family will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“It is necessary to restrain the bull in us in order to elevate it to the Bull. This means to say that the instinctive desire which shows itself as rage concentrated upon a single thing, and which blinds one to everything else, is to be restrained and thus elevated to the propensity for profound meditation. This entire operation is summarized in Hermeticism by the words "to be silent". The precept "to be silent" is not, as many authors interpret it, solely a rule of prudence, but it is moreover a practical method of transforming this narrowing and blinkering instinct into a propensity towards depth and, correspondingly, an aversion towards all that is superficial in nature.
The winged Bull is therefore the result obtained by the procedure of "being silent". This means to say that the Bull is elevated to the level of the Eagle and united with it. A marriage of the impetus towards the heights and the propensity towards depth is effected by this union. The marriage of opposites - this traditional theme of alchemy - is the essence of the practice of the law of the Cross.”
― Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“The Eyes See Only What The Mind Is Prepared To Comprehend.”
― Henri Bergson

“Our greatest need is to be silent before this great God with the appetite and with the tongue, for the only language he hears is the silent language of love.”
― John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (includes The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle, The Living Flame of Love, Letters, and The Minor Works) [Revised Edition]

“Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation.”
― Juan de la Cruz, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (includes The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle, The Living Flame of Love, Letters, and The Minor Works) [Revised Edition]

“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”
― Meister Eckhart

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”
― Meister Eckhart

“Through the study of books one seeks God; by meditation one finds him.”
― Padre Pio