“Let anything that happens to you happen and just sit there and watch it. Don't interfere with it. Don't do anything about it. Don't try to correct it. Don't try to erase the pain, the tension, the anxiety. Just sit there and take it. Let the outer situation do anything it wants to you until you see that it is not doing it at all but that you are. That's why you have to remain right where you are until you see that you are doing it, not that man, not that woman, not that society. I am doing it all by myself. I am attributing power out there because I am falsely attributing power to my negative self, which doesn't exist.”

“When you really see that you are doing something against yourself,
you will no longer do it.”

“Simple understanding has no fears.”

“Beauty is finding yourself.”

“I am not yesterday.”

“All hostility is enmity against God.”

“Hostility is an enemy of God and goodness.”

    “If you’re willing enough, God will be right there.”

    “To be a grown-up, spiritually mature human being is the greatest and only prize on earth.”

“If you see that you love the night, you will not want to be there any more.”

    “Ask yourself, ‘Do I really want this self-destructive state?’”

“Stop wanting the survival of the false self.”

“If only you knew how free you are!”

    “Be willing to give up being bad.”

“I will direct my strength towards self-understanding.”

    “To wake up means to no longer unknowingly toss coals onto your uncomfortable inner fire.”

“You need not accept the existence of anything until it exists for you personally.”

“You must see where you are consenting to your own torment.”

“Happiness consists of knowing the answer to the question,
‘Who is this defeat happening to?’ The answer is, ‘No one.’”

“You fear to admit that you are an insane person living in an insane world.
You fear to admit this because you also fear that there is no solution. There is.”

“What you think you want, what you think will make you happy, what you desire,
won’t make you happy. Give it up and something new can take its place.”

“The person who causes the grief is the one who suffers from it
and the one who has to correct it.”

“Be true to your nature.”

“Relax, detach, contact.”

“Ask yourself often, ‘How do I feel right now?’”

“Oh, how easy your life will be when you are sane.”

“No one is meaner to you than you are to yourself.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that you are on a collision course with yourself.”

    “Do you feel better now that you have made that hateful accusation and told a lie as well?”

     “Here is what to do in order to snap the chain of pain you’ve got going:
Choose to go with Truth first. ‘Forsaking all others, follow thou me.’”

“Some people prolong their unhappiness by dramatizing it,
which is like expecting applause for having a headache.”

“You don’t have to try any more to give importance to your life.
You’re not going to find it.”

     “Vow: I’m not going to please one person in my life. No more running up the white flag myself in order to have friends. Let the whole world go!”

     “Go into any crisis or situation that must be handled saying, ‘I will handle this the best I know how, yet at the same time I will know there is a much higher way to handle it.’”

     “I phoned you to ask a practical question about a necessary matter. This took 5 seconds. You then told me about your cousin in Kansas who keeps a pet pig. This took 10 minutes.”

     “I phoned you to ask a practical question about a necessary matter. This took 7 seconds. You then told me about your childhood victory of being able to climb higher into the Sycamore tree than anyone else. This took 12 minutes.”

     “I phoned you to ask a practical question about a necessary matter. This took 10 seconds. You then gave me detailed information on telling the difference between a butterfly and a moth. This took 14 minutes.”

     “Make an effort to simplify your work on yourself. Use simple words. If you have hatred, use the word ‘hatred,’ not ‘a mild resentment.’ Don’t use the words to complicate the task. Use the words that hurt. That shows you what you are really like.”

     “Why don’t you walk away empty from that challenge, having the courage to not think about what happened? What happened to you today that you couldn’t walk away from because it kept nagging you and you went into all those stupid emotions?”

     “The next time you catch yourself falling into despair or any other negative thought or anything negative, you have to quietly say “NO” to it. You are to do this not once a day, not 50 times a day, but 500 times a day.”

     “I will give you a fundamental truth. Your free nature, your essence, your kingdom within — call it any name you want — is free from all anxieties, from all tensions, from all nervousness, from all groping around in the dark as to what life is all about. Your original nature is a totally free element. It has no problems at all. This is truth. This is reality. This is what God is — and God cannot have any problems at all. When we are unified with this state, when we have come back home to it, we are free human beings.”

    “What if in the middle of cooking dinner you see a dark feeling of depression coming to you and you say, ‘Just suppose I don’t have to be taken over by that dark feeling of depression. Just suppose there is another way to live.’ That will counter the dark feeling, and that is right. This will bypass all those imps in you who want nothing to do with truth. It is a right start and it will carry you a long, long way. There comes an urge in you to change.”

    “Don’t you ever accept anger in yourself or others as being right. If you will refuse to accept anger, hostility and hatred — this inner violence — as right and necessary, you will then begin to see where the actual cause of your problem is. You now justify violence in yourself and others you are allied with. They hate the same things you do, and you justify each other’s hatred.”

    “If all you can think of is getting advantages, you’re always losing. You have pillows in your mind which prevent you from seeing how weak and vulnerable you are. You’re sitting in a little corner in your mind thinking you’re safe. You’re not. You’re only lying to yourself. True goodness is only what is higher than your present nature. As an exercise, see how your dress and words and behavior are constantly telling everybody who and what you are. Since imagination has taken the place of reality, you must first destroy imagination in your life by listening to yourself, watching yourself behave, actually catching yourself in your secret thoughts with your hidden motives. This is so you can in time learn what is good for you, so you can choose the right over what is habitual and easy and popular. All that has to be broken down by something you have invited in, by consciousness. To get your reward, you must do your work. You must follow the exercises!”

“By ceasing to interfere with your own happiness, it arrives.”

“Real wisdom resides in the silent space between two thoughts.”

“The only authentic authority is your own original nature.”

“A primary cause of guilt is our failure to live up to our illusions about ourselves.”

“People ought to feel ashamed of themselves, but many are too gone for even this.”

“I annoy me.”

“Weakness invites contempt from weak people.”

“The problem is not that you have it but that you are not outgrowing it.”

“While there is no you who can rescue you, there can be an impersonal awareness
of the rescuing process. The rescue is complete when the awareness is complete.”

     “There is something seriously wrong with you. There is no way you can deny that fact. So does it make sense to refuse to do something about it?”

     “Tell a woman  fifty times that you like her, after which she will pause three seconds and then ask, ‘Yes, but do you still like me?’”

     “My dear friend, for the last several minutes you have talked steadily to me about yourself and your activities. May I ask you a question about it? Might it occur to you that I have no interest at all in what you are saying? Or does your sickening self-centeredness prevent you from seeing this?”

     “To be truly spiritually healthy is to be unique; to be spiritually sick while pretending to be healthy makes a man a part of the common herd.”

     “At last! I have perfected my act of cowardice; I will childishly criticize any idea that is above my ability to understand.”

     “It is very obvious that he is a very poor spiritual teacher. I have heard ten of his lectures and he is completely incapable of making me understand anything he says.”

“Nothing matters except to stay awake.”