He who renders true judgment is a co-worker with God.
-Mekilta
As kusa grass, wrongly grasped,
Only cuts one's hand,
So the ascetic life, wrongly taken up,
Drags one down to hell.
-"Connected Discourses of the Buddha"
Imperishable is the Lord of Love.
Even the poorest heart has some jewel on which it hangs.
-Karl Emil Franzos
Master Shih-t'ou said, "A thousand kinds of sayings and ten thousand sorts of explanations are just intended to teach you to always be unconfused." What is popular in groups nowadays is just nominal Zen study; to try to find even one person who is always unconfused is like trying to pick the moon from the sky.
-Tuan-ch'iao
Walking the spiritual path is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.
-Chogyam Trungpa, "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism"
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
-Dag Hammarskjold
A man asked the Prophet, "What sort of deeds or (what qualities of) Islam are good?" The Prophet replied, "To feed (the poor) and greet those whom you know and those whom you do not know."
-Hadith narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Amr, as related by Al-Bukhari
I belong to God, as has often been shown; yet I also belong to myself. He becomes himself through me. I live in him, and I live in myself. I have two aspects, he and I, divine and human. But he is not I, and I am not he. My actions are the theatre in which he expresses himself; to him I am a vessel.
-Ibn Arabi