“... for no change comes calmly over the world...”

“Tell me, how would you feel if everyone screamed and ran when they saw you coming, or hunted you down like a criminal? How long would you sanity last?"..."...Tell me something else, if all the world was blind save one man, wouldn't the world be inclined to call that man's sight a hallucination? And the man with eyes might even come to agree with the world.”

“When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.”

“When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye and, and the rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

“Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.”

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

“The monk's ultimate goal is direct union with the Godhead. But to aim at that goal is to miss it altogether. His task is to rid himself of ego so that consciousness, once its usual discordant mental content is dumped out of it through ritual prayer and meditation, may experience nonself as a living formlessness and emptiness into which God may come, if it please Him to come.”