One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.

We must know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is, how not to interfere.

Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.

The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification ofthe spirit.

One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors.

That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.

The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.