“During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. “There is no such thing as truth,” they teach even the little ones. “Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with your self. Do what feels comfortable.” Those who speak in this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants.”
“The choice to remain faithful to the drive to question (the fertile source of the experience of nothingness) brings with it an obscure joy. For to be faithful to that drive...is to be constantly expanding one's horizon, constantly losing one's life, and constantly regaining it. It is to be as alert to other persons, to situations, and to events as one can: to their fragility and terror, as well as to their obscure coherence and often veiled beauty. To be faithful to the drive to question is to accept despair as one's due, to accept risk as one's condition, and to accept the crumbs of discovery as joy. [...] The darkness is habitable...Those who accept the darkness as their lot are instantly secure, not through some newfound solidity but through the perception that insecurity is man's natural state, a truthful state, a healthy state.”
“In all my years on earth, I have seen time and time again that those who are the happiest are those who have the courage to follow their hearts - to believe what otherwise would be unbelievable; to seek the light; to find the truth.”
“You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to, but if you are kind about it, you can convince them to do the right thing, even if they are uncertain what that is.--Jala, Healer to the House of Soris”
“We had little or no emotion. We lacked the capacity to feel fear, to experience love, to enjoy the sensations of happiness and delight.The finest warriors are not only those who do not fear, but those who are without anger.”
“The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.”
“You can notice that those who are more loving and conciliatory do not try to force their truth upon us and have learned to express their truth in ways that still allow for others’ truth to be heard and felt. We can see in our daily experience that there are, in fact, many people who carry in their presence a magnanimity and life-enhancing energetic that invites tolerance, spaciousness for difference, and a capacity to be comfortable with ambiguity.”