We're trying to fill something internal with something external. We're trying to fill something real with something illusionary.
Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.
Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.
Nirvana is something within you. It is not an external reality. No god thunders down from the mountaintop. Just as the great mystics in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths all discovered, God is within the self. God is virtually inseparable from ourselves.
Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter – this is what life is, herein lies its task.
External images act on me, transmit movement to me, and I return movement: how could images be in my consciousness since I am myself image, that is, movement?
I want to work beyond external aggressions, forget that one has something to do for others if it's not for oneself.
My books have come many years apart and each one seems to reflect a period of experience. Ending the book is like putting a period on a certain movement. Interior and external - both.
Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.
The future seems a little gloomy! Go to bed early, sleep well, eat moderately at breakfast; the future looks brighter. The world's outlook may not have changed, but our capacity for dealing with it has. Happiness, or unhappiness, depends to some extent on external conditions, but also, and in most cases chiefly, on our own physical and mental powers. Some people would be discontented in Paradise, others. . . are cheerful in a graveyard.
Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control.
Life is in balance. The swings in the mind are there to give you the experience, and to let you discover the you within you. . . That balance and swing lets your standard be tested. You cannot hold to something external. You must find your own depth and test it, confirm it.
Peace is the result of an inner state of harmony. It is not obtained by eliminating anything external, it is inside ourselves that we must find and suppress the causes of war.
Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions. Vigilantly practice polite indifference to that which we can't control. Your happiness can only be found within.
The reason why clutter clearing is effective is that while you are putting your external world in order there are corresponding changes going on internally too.
The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
Worship does not consist in prayers and in external devotion, but in a life of kindness.
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
We live in a time of conflict - external and internal - when we sometimes concentrate too much on what divides us. Today, fly the Stars and Stripes with pride and confidence that what unites is far stronger.