The menu is not the meal.

The problem comes up because we ask the question in the wrong way. We supposed that solids were one thing and space quite another, or just nothing whatever. Then it appeared that space was no mere nothing, because solids couldn't do without it. But the mistake in the beginning was to think of solids and space as two different things, instead of as two aspects of the same thing. The point is that they are different but inseparable, like the front end and the rear end of a cat. Cut them apart, and the cat dies.

Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again.

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.

The sense of wrong is simply failure to see where something fits into a pattern, to be confused as to the hierarchical level upon which an event belongs.

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.

The more we struggle for life as pleasure, the more we are actually killing what we love.

But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.

Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Our aspirations are our possibilities.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

There are two ways of spreading light - to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Worthy books are not companions - they are solitudes: we lose ourselves in them and all our cares.

“Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.”