Life and Existence

Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles, they toughen and make strong. Problems make one better able to cope with life.

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

You can’t pray a lie.

There is at bottom only one problem in the world, and this is its name. How does one break through? How does one get into the open? How does one burst the cocoon and become a butterfly?

There is at bottom only one problem in the world, and this is its name. How does one break through? How does one get into the open? How does one burst the cocoon and become a butterfly?

Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention— on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God— that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention— on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God— that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying.

The struggle is to synchronize the potential being with the actual being, to make a fruitful liaison between the man of yesterday and the man of tomorrow.

The struggle is to synchronize the potential being with the actual being, to make a fruitful liaison between the man of yesterday and the man of tomorrow.

Most people live . . . in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness . . . much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.

Potential has a shelf-life.

Politics is a game of compromise . . . faith isn’t.

Poetry is life distilled.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It’s concentrated, you carry it around with you, and it nourishes you when you need it.

The man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him, and he will certainly miss him.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

In the carriages of the past you can’t go anywhere.

Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one’s parents.

as the silent voice of our parents from the country of the dead.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it; and difficulties are but the maids of honor to set off the virtue.