Don Juan assured me that in order to accomplish the feat of making myself miserable I had to work in the most intense fashion, and that it was absurd. I had now realized I could work just the same in making myself complete and strong. "The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said. "We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.

Do you know at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity if you so desire?

For an instant I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me, held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor.

The body must be perfection before the will is a functioning unit

Things are only real after one has learned to agree on their realness. What took place this evening, for instance, cannot possibly be real to you, because no one could agree with you about it. 'Do you mean that you didn't see what happened?'. Of course I did. But I don't count. I am the one who's lying to you, remember?

It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us