True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, 

but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

Beware of the man 

who works hard to learn something, 

learns it, 

and finds himself 

no wiser than before.

You know those nights, 

when you're sleeping, 

and it's totally dark, 

and absolutely silent, 

and you don't dream, 

and there's only blackness, 

and this is the reason, 

it's because on those nights 

you've gone away. 

On those nights, 

you're in someone else's dream, 

you're busy in someone else's dream.

There will be well-testable theories, 

hardly testable theories, 

and non-testable theories. 

Those which are non-testable 

are of no interest to empirical scientists. 

They may be described as metaphysical.

The only way to deal 

with an unfree world 

is to become so absolutely free 

that your very existence 

is an act of rebellion.

There are also two kinds of truths: 

truth of reasoning and truths of fact. 

Truths of reasoning are necessary 

and their opposite is impossible; 

those of fact are contingent 

and their opposite is possible.

The highest activity a human being can attain 

is learning for understanding, 

because to understand is to be free.

Desultory reading is delightful, 

but to be beneficial, 

our reading must be carefully directed.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, 

the whole aim and end of human existence.

The problems that exist in the world today 

cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

Whereas when any of the great mythic imageries 

comes to be read as poetry, as art, as a vehicle 

not of empirical information 

but of experience

— in other words: not as a newspaper —

we find a message of accord,

which, in brief, is that of the living god,

who is not apart, 

but within all

and of no definition.

It is one of the great lessons of our study

that for the vulgar, ill- or uninstructed mind,

myths tend to become history

and there ensues a type of attachment 

to the mere accidents of the local forms

that, on the one hand, 

binds so-called believers into contending groups

and, on the other hand,

deprives them all of the substance of the message

each believes itself alone to have received.

All orthodoxies show this tendency in great or slight degree

and they are consequently mutually opposed.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The best part of beauty
is that which no picture can express.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; 

the mechanic that would perfect his work 

must first sharpen his tools.

He who is not contented 

with what he has, 

would not be contented 

with what he would like to have.

The key to wisdom is this — 

constant and frequent questioning, 

for by doubting 

we are led to question 

and by questioning 

we arrive at the truth.

The only defence against the world 

is a thorough knowledge of it.

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; 

all this is nothing but to perceive.

Nothing is more active than thought, 

for it travels over the universe, 

and nothing is stronger than necessity 

for all must submit to it.

Ideas are like stars; 

you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. 

But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, 

you choose them as your guides, 

and following them 

you will reach your destiny.

One should as a rule respect public opinion 

in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation 

and to keep out of prison, 

but anything that goes beyond this 

is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, 

and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, 

and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Vivere est Cogitare

刚下过雨又要下雨的云

We are what we repeatedly do. 

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted 

as biography, history, or science, 

it is killed.

Mythologies are in fact the public dreams 

that move and shape societies, 

and conversely 

one’s own dreams are the little myths 

of the private gods, antigods, and guardian powers 

that are moving and shaping oneself: 

revelations of the actual fears, desires, aims and values 

by which one’s life is subliminally ordered.

The courage to face the trials 

and to bring a whole new body of possibilities 

into the field of interpreted experience 

for other people to experience

 - that is the hero's deed.

The privilege of a lifetime

is being who you are.

'All life,' said the Buddha, 'is sorrowful'; 

and so, indeed, it is. 

Life consuming life: 

that is the essence of its being, 

which is forever a becoming. 

'The world,' said the Buddha, 'is an ever-burning fire.' 

And so it is. 

And that is what one has to affirm, 

with a yea! a dance! 

a knowing, solemn, stately dance 

of the mystic bliss beyond pain 

that is at the heart of every mythic rite.

I am tomorrow, 

or some future day, 

what I establish today. 

I am today 

what I established yesterday 

or some previous day.

The secret of dreams is that 

subject and object are the same. 

The object is self-luminous, 

fluent in form, 

multivalent in its meanings. 

It’s your dream, 

the manifestation of your will.

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, 

without understanding what is the interest of the individual.

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. 

And that's what it is. 

The nature is your nature, 

and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology 

are referring to something in you. 

When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there 

so that you never make the reference to yourself, 

you have misread the image.

Experience is not what happens to you; 

it's what you do with what happens to you.

The way is not in the sky. 

The way is in the heart.