Best 62 quotes in «transcendentalism quotes» category

In the non-dual state, God, soul and universe are essentially one absolute system which is all-pervading, uncreated, self-luminous and eternal.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

In trying to understand McCandless, I inevitably came to reflect on other, larger subjects as well: the grip wilderness has on the American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons. The result of this meandering inquiry is the book now before you.

I realized the universe had consumed my whole entity with its divine sensation of eternal bliss. All I could consciously perceive in that state of mind was absolute oneness. I felt being one with the banyan tree, under which I was sitting. I felt one with the corns in the field. I felt one with the sky and the clouds in it. As if everything was me, and I was everything. I didn’t have any perception of time or space. All that there was, was an all- pervading eternity – a state of non-dualism.

It is the ultimate religion, through which the son, the Father and all elements of the universe become unified.

Money is representative, and follows the nature and fortunes of the owner...The farmer is covetous of his dollar, and with reason. It is no waif to him. He knows how many strokes of labor it represents. His bones ache with the days' work that earned it. He knows how much land it represents - how much rain, frost and sunshine. He knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much discretion and patience, so much hoeing and threshing. Try to lift his dollar; you must lift all that weight. In the city, where money follows the skit of a pen or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on as light.

In absolute incommunicableness it stood apart, a thought, a system of thought which as yet had no symbol in spoken language

My time in the woods is time spent with a tutor on how to live.

Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite.

None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society is wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

Once you emerge from the state of absolute divinity, the self within you becomes Christ – it becomes Buddha – it becomes Moses – it becomes Krishna. The sage who emerges from the state of non-duality begins to perceive the self as Christ, not Christ as Christ – the self as Moses, not Moses as Moses – the self as Mohammed, not Mohammed as Mohammed – the self as Krishna, not Krishna as Krishna.

Once you attain the state of Absolute Oneness or Non-Duality, you become one of those spiritual legends that humanity so gloriously venerates as the founding fathers of religion.

Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite. Awakening into that state makes all the perceptual limitations of the mind disappear, just like a bucket of muddy water turns crystal-clear once poured into the ocean.

The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name.

Oneness is God.

That law of nature whereby everything climbs to higher platforms, and bodily vigor becomes mental and moral vigor. The bread he eats is first strength and animal spirits; it becomes, in higher laboratories, imagery and thought; and in still higher results, courage and endurance. This is the right compound interest; this is capital doubled, quadrupled, centupled; man raised to his highest power. The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation and not in augmenting animal existence.

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.

Prayer… panacea for some, placebo to others. I thought of it as an epidural administered through the soul to anesthetize the mind.

The radically phenomenal thing about the truth is once you find it, you can dig and dig and you’re just going to reveal more and more. There is no end when one starts digging in the direction of the truth. It’s the ultimate life adventure.

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit it to imitate the sayers. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

The transcendental state of Absolute Oneness sets the human mind free.

There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers and instructions on some books, and want others to do the same. But, to explain God after merely reading the scriptures is like explaining the city of New York after seeing it only in a map.

There is no such thing as 'God given scripture', 'the messenger of God' or 'the Last Prophet'.

The troubles of modern life come from being divorced from nature.

There is a patience of the wild – dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself.

The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also...Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented in fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere. Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

[Transcendentalism maintains] that man has ideas, that come not through the five sense, or the powers of reasoning; but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration, or his immanent presence in the spiritual world.

They should own who can administer, not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves out work for more, opens a path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give all access to the masterpieces of art and nature is the problem of civilization.

This whole earth in which we inhabit is but a point is space.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.

What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

Belief fuels our decisions - even when we are not clearly aware of those beliefs.

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.

Your spiritual goals can be as numerous as there are stars in the sky. And so can be your religions. But in all your vivid and diverse paths of practicing religion and spirituality, there is one very common and simple element that knows no bounds. That element is the eternal bliss that enables you to attain unimaginable feats of excellence. It is not tied to any scripture of yours, yet it is in every scripture of yours.

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.

In actual life it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

I recognize the delivery of grace to my day, even if I cannot identify a specific return address.

So what I did on the field was the essence of what I am. Remember me like that.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

The essence of a democracy is a free electorate.

The essence of good government is trust.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.