1. ”A man has many skins in himself, covering the depths of his heart. Man knows so many things; he does not know himself. Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an ox's or a bear's, so thick and hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself.”
2. "A man is what he loves"
3. “If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. An likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence.”
4. "In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity."
5. "No idea represents or signifies itself. It always points to something else, of which it is a symbol. And since man has no ideas, except those abstracted from external things through the sense, he cannot be blessed by an idea."
6. “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”
7. "The course of heaven is outside time -- and yet time comes from its movements."
8. "The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same--one in seeing, one is knowing, and one in loving."
9. "The mind never rests but must go on expecting and preparing for what is yet known and what is still concealed. Meanwhile, man cannot know what God is, even though he be ever so well of what God is not; and an intelligent person will reject that. As long as it has no reference point, the mind can only wait as matter waits for him. And matter can never find rest except in form; so, too, the mind can never find rest except in the essential truth which is locked up in it--the truth about everything. Essence alone satisfied and God keeps on withdrawing, farther and farther away, to arouse the mind's zeal and lure it to follow and finally grasp the true good that has no cause. Thus, contented with nothing, the mind clamors for the highest good of all."
10. "There is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. You do not have to go away outside yourself to come into real conversation with your soul and with the mysteries of the spiritual world. The eternal is at home -- within you."
11. ”The soul is created in a place between Time and Eternity: with its highest powers it touches Eternity, with its lower Time.”
12. "To seek God by rituals is to get the ritual and lose God in the process, for he hides behind it. On the other hand, to seek God without artifice, is to take him as he is, and so doing, a person 'lives by the Son,' and is the Life itself."
13. ”What a cruel act to be untruthful. Earthqwuakes happen in the heart that hears sounds that are amiss.Havoc is created in the mind that can no longer trust someone once loved, and schisms devour alliances that helped support our life.Words can enrich and be as wonderful spices mixed into the days we imbibe with all our senses.There are fields in the soul -- lush organic meadows, though sounds and words that fall there can be, at time, a poison.A plague is spread by one who cannot tell the truth.”
14. “What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.”
15. "You could not do better than to go where it is dark, that is, unconsciousness."
16. “The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore, if you want to discover nature's nakedness, you must destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there your soul must stay.”
