Religious texts

"All wisdom comes from the Lord and endures with him forever. The fear of the Lord is our glory and honor, it is joy and a triumphant crown. The fear of the Lord gladdens the heart; it gives joy, gaiety and long life. For the one who fears the Lord all will go well at the end of his life, and he will be blessed on the day of his death. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; he put wisdom into the hearts of his faithful ones before their birth. The fear of the Lord is the fullness of wisdom. It will fill you with its fruits. It will fill your whole house with desirable things. It will fill your houses with its riches. The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom. Wherever it is, peace and good health flourish; knowledge and prudence rain down. Wisdom exalts those who possess her. The fear of the Lord is the root of wisdom. Its branches are long life. The fear of the Lord driveth away sins: and where it is present, it turneth away wrath. Do you desire wisdom? Keep the commandments and the Lord will give her to you without measure; for fear of the Lord is wisdom and learning; what pleases him is faithfulness and gentleness. Do not put aside fear of the Lord; approach him with a sincere heart."

"My son, if you have decided to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Keep your heart upright and remain resolute; do not be upset in the time of adversity. Hold fast to the Lord, do not separate yourself from him so that you may be successful to the end of your days. Accept all that happens to you, be patient when you are humbled, for as gold is tested in the fire, so those acceptable to God are tested in the crucible of humiliation. Have confidence in him and he will take care of you; follow the right path and hope in him. You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy and do not turn away lest you fall. You who fear the Lord, trust him and you will not lose your reward. You who fear the Lord, hope for all good things; hope for eternal joy and mercy. Remember what happened to your ancestors. Who has ever trusted in the Lord and been confounded? Who has persevered in fear of the Lord and been abandoned? Who has called upon him and not been heard? For the Lord is compassion and loving-kindness; he forgives our sins and saves us in time of distress."

"Those who fear the Lord do not disobey his commandments; those who love him faithfully keep his laws. Those who fear the Lord seek to please him; those who love him are filled with his law. Those who fear the Lord keep their hearts ready and humble themselves in his presence saying, “Let us fall into the hands of the Lord and not into the hands of mortals, for great as his power is his mercy.”"

"For the Lord established that children should respect their father; he confirmed the right of the mother over her children. Whoever honors his father atones for his sins; he who gives glory to his mother prepares a treasure for himself. Whoever honors his father will receive joy from his own children and will be heard when he prays. Whoever glorifies his father will have a long life. Whoever obeys the Lord gives comfort to his mother. He serves those who brought him to birth as he would serve the Lord. Honor your father in word and deed so that his blessing may come on you. For a father’s blessing secures the future of his children, but a mother’s curse destroys them at their roots. Do not rejoice at the humiliation of your father because his dishonor is no glory for you. For a man’s glory comes from his father’s reputation; a mother who is not respected is a disgrace to her children. My child, take care of your father in his old age, do not cause him sorrow as long as he lives. Even if he has lost his mind, have patience; do not be disrespectful to him while you are in full health. For kindness done to one’s father will never be forgotten, it will serve as reparation for your sins. In the day of adversity the Lord will remember it to your advantage; for just as ice melts in the heat, so will your sins melt away. The man who abandons his father is like a blasphemer; he who annoys his mother is cursed by the Lord."

"The greater you are, the more you should humble yourself and thus you will find favor with God."

"Many are in high place, and of renown: but mysteries are revealed unto the meek. For great is the power of the Lord and it is the humble who give him glory."

"Do not tire yourself in resolving useless questions since the knowledge you already have goes beyond human understanding. For many have been led astray by their personal theories and false pretension has undermined reason."

"As water extinguishes the burning flames, almsgiving obtains pardon for sins. The man who responds by doing good prepares for the future, at the moment of his downfall he will find support."

"My son, do not deny the poor his food and do not make the man who looks at you with pleading eyes wait. Do not sadden the hungry person nor annoy anyone who is in need. Do not exasperate an angry man nor withhold alms from the beggar. Do not drive away the beggar who is weighed down with afflictions, nor turn away your face from the poor; do not snub the needy nor give anyone a reason to curse you. If someone curses you in the bitterness of his heart, the Creator will hear his prayer."

"Deliver the oppressed from the hands of the oppressor. Do not be weak when you administer justice. Be like a father towards orphans and like a husband towards their mothers. Then you will be like a son of the Most High and he will love you more than your own mother."

"Wisdom brings up her children and takes care of those who look for her. Whoever loves her loves life. Those who rise early in the morning in search of her will be filled with joy. Whoever possesses her will have glory and wherever he goes blessings will follow. Those who serve her are ministers of the Holy One; those who love her are loved of the Lord. He who listens to her will have good judgment. He who obeys her will rest in safety. Whoever trusts in her will possess her and his children after him will inherit her. For in the beginning she will lead him by rough paths, causing him to fear and be terrified; she will plague him with her discipline until she can count on him; and she will put him to the test by her demands. Then she will lead him on a level path, give him joy and reveal her secrets to him. But if he wanders from the path, she will abandon him and allow him to be lost."

"Do not remain silent when it is necessary to speak. Do not, through pride, hide your wisdom. It is in speech that wisdom is recognized and learning in the spoken discourse."

"Fight for the truth till death and the Lord will fight for you."

"Do not be daring in your speech, but lazy and negligent in works."

"Do not rely on your wealth. Do not say, “I am self-sufficient.” Do not let yourself be carried away by greed and violence; they would make you their slave."

"Do not say, “Who can stop me?” For the Lord has power to punish you. Do not say, “I have sinned and nothing has happened!” For the Lord bides his time. Do not be so sure of pardon when you are heaping sin upon sin. Do not say, “His compassion is great! He will forgive the vast number of my sins!” For with him is mercy but also anger; his fury will be poured out on sinners."

"If you know what you are saying, answer your neighbor; if not, it is better to say nothing. Your words can bring you honor and dishonor; a man’s tongue brings about his downfall."

"Just as the wicked man inherits confusion and shame so will the sinner accustomed to lying. Do not give yourself over to your passions; they will turn against you and, like a bull, tear you to pieces. They will devour the foliage and destroy the fruit, leaving you like a dry stump. An evil passion will destroy the one who is held in its power; it will make him the laughingstock of his enemies."

"A gentle word makes many friends, an agreeable tongue calls forth gracious replies."

"Let your friends be many; but your counselors, one in a thousand!"

"The faithful friend is a secure refuge; whoever has found one has found a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond all price; hold him as priceless. A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, and those who fear the Lord will find one. Whoever fears the Lord will make true friends for, as a man is, such will his friend be."

"My son, dedicate yourself to learning from your youth, and you will grow in wisdom until old age. Work at it like the worker and the sower, cultivate wisdom and wait for her excellent fruits. For in cultivating her you will have some trouble, but soon you will enjoy her fruits."

"For wisdom brings her own honor, she does not reveal herself to everyone. Listen, my son, and receive my teaching, do not reject my counsel. Put her constraints on your feet and her yoke on your neck. Put your shoulder to the burden and bear her yoke; do not rebel against her chains. Come to her with all your soul and with all your strength observe her ways. Pursue her, search for her, she will make herself known to you; when you have her, do not let her go. For, in the end, you will find in her your rest and she will become your joy."

"Meditate on the precepts of the Lord and apply yourself unceasingly to his commandments. He will strengthen your heart and the wisdom you desire will be given to you."

"Do no evil and evil will not take hold of you. Keep away from wrongdoing and it will leave you alone."

"Do not seek a position of responsibility lest you not be powerful enough to root out injustice and, overawed by a powerful man, you lose your integrity."

"Do not despise a man when he is downcast, for there is one who casts down and who raises up."

"Do not join the company of sinners, remember that the wrath of God will not be delayed."

"Remain humble, because the godless are punished with fire and worms."

"Do not separate yourself from a wise and good woman, because a gracious wife is worth more than gold."

"Have you children? Educate them and teach them to obey from their childhood. Have you any daughters? Guard their virginity and do not be indulgent towards them. If you marry off your daughter you will have accomplished something of importance, but give her to an intelligent man."

"Honor your father with your whole heart and do not be forgetful of the sufferings of your mother. Remember that they gave you birth. How can you repay them for what they have done for you?"

"Stretch out your hand to the poor and you will receive a blessing from the Lord. May your gifts benefit the living and do not forget the dead. Do not turn away from those who weep, and grieve with those who are in sorrow. Do not neglect to visit the sick because it is for such acts that you will be loved."

"In all your actions remember your last end and you will never sin."

"Do not offend the man who repents of his sins, remember that we are all deserving punishment."

"Do not despise a man in his old age, because we ourselves will grow old. Do not rejoice at the death of any man, remember that we shall all die. Do not neglect the teaching of the wise, apply yourself well to their precepts. Through them you will learn how to live and how to serve the great. Do not set aside the teachings of the elders for they also learnt it from their forebears; they will open up your understanding and enable you to reply at the right moment."

"Do not be jealous of your own wife; do not give her reason to disgrace you. Do not put yourself into the power of any woman to the point where she can dominate you. Do not go near a woman of ill-repute for fear of falling into her nets. Do not dally with a singing girl for fear of being caught in her snare. Do not fix your gaze on a young girl for fear of being involved in her condemnation. Do not deliver yourself into the power of prostitutes lest you lose your inheritance. Do not glance about you in the streets of the town; do not loiter in lonely places."

"Turn your eyes away from a good-looking woman and do not stare at a beautiful foreigner. For the beauty of a woman has caused many to fall; in her presence love blazes up like a fire."

"Never sit near a married woman or drink wine with her, for fear that your feelings towards her be roused and that in your passion you slide towards your downfall."

"Do not abandon an old friend, for a new one has not the same value."

"Do not envy the success of the sinner, you do not know what his end will be. Do not take pleasure in what pleases the godless, remember that they will be punished before they die."

"Love to speak with intelligent men and let all your discourses be about the law of the Most High. Let just men be your companions at table; take pride in your fear of the Lord."

"A king without wisdom will ruin his people; a city will prosper through the wisdom of its rulers. The government of the earth is in the hands of the Lord; in his own time he will raise up the right leader. Human success is in the hands of the Lord and he clothes the rulers with his glory."

"Pride is odious to both God and man; injustice is abhorrent to both of them."

"Sovereignty passes from one nation to another because of injustice, violence and wealth."

"How can there be such pride in someone who is nothing but dust and ashes? Even while he is living, man’s bowels are full of rottenness."

"The illness lasts while the doctor makes light of it; and one who is king today will die tomorrow."

"The Lord has overturned the thrones of princes and set up the meek in their place. The Lord has torn up the proud by the roots and has planted the humble in their place. The Lord has overturned the land of the pagans and totally destroyed them. He has devastated several of them, destroyed them and removed all remembrance of them from the face of the earth."

"Which race is worthy of honor? The human race. Which race is worthy of honor? Those who fear the Lord. Which race is despicable? The human race. Which race is despicable? Those who break the commandments."

"The leader is worthy of respect in the midst of his brethren, but he has respect for those who fear the Lord. Whether they be rich, honored or poor, their pride should be in fearing the Lord."

"It is not right to despise the poor man who keeps the law; it is not fitting to honor the sinful man."

"The leader, the judge, and the powerful man are worthy of honor, but no one is greater than the man who fears the Lord."

"Do not be proud because of the clothes you wear; do not be proud when people honor you. Do you know what the Lord is preparing in a mysterious way? Many tyrants have been overthrown and someone unknown has received the crown. Many powerful men have been completely disgraced and famous men handed over into the power of others."

"Do not reprehend anyone unless you have first been fully informed, consider the case first and thereafter make your reproach. Do not reply before you have listened; do not interrupt the one who is speaking. Do not interfere in what is not your business; do not meddle in the disputes of sinners."

"Good and evil, life and death, poverty and riches, all come from the Lord."

"The just can count on the generosity of the Lord and his goodness will guide them forever. A man may become rich through being careful and miserly and this is his reward. The day on which he thinks, “I have earned my rest, now I can live on my possessions,” he does not know how long he is going to live. He will have to die and leave his goods to others."

"Do not be disconcerted at the success of sinners but have confidence in God and persevere in your own efforts. It is easy for the Lord in an instant to make the poor man rich."

"Do not say, “What do I need? What more could I have or desire?” Do not say, “I have all that is necessary, what misfortune can harm me now?” On good days, one forgets the bad; and on bad days one forgets the good. Even when the end draws near, it is easy for the Lord to reward a man according to the way he has lived. The hour of adversity makes one forget pleasure; at the end of a man’s life his deeds will be revealed."

"Do good to the godly man and you will receive a reward, if not from the man himself, at least from the Most High."

"Give to the godly man, do not help the sinner; do good to the humble, do not give to the ungodly; deny him bread, do not give it to him lest he eventually dominate you. He will repay you with a double evil for all the good that you have done for him. For the Most High himself detests sinners and carries out his vengeance on the ungodly. Give to the good man but do not help the sinner."

"A friend does not become an enemy in the time of prosperity, nor does an enemy remain hidden in the time of adversity. When a man is doing well, his enemies are sad; when he is suffering misfortune, even his friends hasten to abandon him."

"Who will have pity on the snakecharmer bitten by a snake or on those who go near wild beasts? It is the same for the man who joins company with a sinner and finds himself involved in his wrongdoing. The sinner will remain quietly with you for an hour but when you are distracted he will throw away his mask."

"He who touches tar will be soiled; he who associates with an arrogant man will become like him. Do not carry too heavy a load; do not make friends with someone stronger and richer than you. Why put the earthen pot near the iron one? One will bang the other and break it. The rich man does wrong and is unconcerned; the poor man is insulted and apologizes. The rich man uses you as long as you are useful to him; when you have nothing left he deserts you. He will stay with you as long as you have something; he will drain you without a second thought."

"The proud man hates humility; so, also, the poor man is detestable to the rich. When the rich man stumbles, his friends support him, but when the poor man falls, his friends desert him. When the rich man gets into trouble, there are many who come to his rescue; if he speaks nonsense, they congratulate him. When the poor man makes a mistake, they criticize him; if he speaks sensibly, they pay no attention. When the rich man speaks, all are silent and they praise his words to the skies. The poor man speaks and people ask, “Who is this?” And if he stumbles, they push him down."

"Wealth is good if there is no sin in it and poverty is evil when it is the reward for godlessness."

"Happy the one who has not sinned in speech or who feels no remorse for his faults. Happy is he whose own conscience does not condemn him and who has not fallen from his ideals."

"My son, use well whatever you have and give worthy offerings to the Lord. Remember that death will not delay and your time has not yet been revealed to you."

"All living things grow old like clothing. This is the eternal law: “You will die.” Like green leaves on a bushy tree: some sprout and others fall off, so are the generations of flesh and blood: one dies and another is born. All finite things pass away and their maker with them."

"Such is the one who fears the Lord, embraces the Law will obtain wisdom. She will come out to meet him like a mother and greet him like a virgin bride; she will feed him with the bread of understanding and give him the water of wisdom to drink. He will rely on her and will not waver; he will lean on her and will not be let down. Wisdom will make him greater than his friends and he will be able to speak in the full assembly. He will be crowned with happiness and joy. He will inherit an everlasting name."

"Do not say, “It was God who made me sin.” God does not cause what he hates. Do not say, “He made me do wrong,” for he has nothing to do with a sinner. The Lord hates all evil and those who fear him hate it as well."

"When he created man in the beginning, he left him free to make his own decisions. If you wish, you can keep the commandments and it is in your power to remain faithful. He has set fire and water before you; you stretch out your hand to whichever you prefer. Life and death are set before man: whichever a man prefers will be given him."

"How magnificent is the wisdom of the Lord! He is powerful and all-seeing. His eyes are on those who fear him. He knows all the works of man. He has commanded no one to be godless and has given no one permission to sin."

"Do not long for a brood of worthless children, and take no joy in godless sons. However many you have, do not rejoice in them if they have no fear of God. Do not depend on their having a long life, or trust in their number, because one is better than a thousand and their death is preferable to their being godless."

"A city can arise from one man who is prudent. Yet, even though the wicked become a great tribe, they will be destroyed. I have seen such things with my own eyes and my ears have heard of still greater things. Fire has come upon the meeting of sinners and God’s wrath is kindled against rebellious people. God did not pardon the leaders of old who rebelled in their pride of strength. He did not spare the city where Lot lived; he detested their pride. He showed no pity on the people doomed to destruction; they were annihilated for their sins."

"In the same way, he dealt with the six hundred thousand men who, in the hardness of their hearts, had revolted. Had there been only one stubborn man it would have been amazing if he had escaped unpunished, since mercy and anger belong to the Lord who is powerful both in forgiveness and in punishment. His justice is as great as his mercy and he judges people by their deeds."

"Just as the sinner will not escape with his booty, the patience of the upright man will not go unrewarded. God will reward every act of mercy; each person will be treated according to his deeds."

"Do not say, “I will hide from the Lord; who will remember me up there? I will not be recognized in the midst of so many. What am I in the immensity of creation?” Look: the sky and the heavens above the sky, the sea and the earth tremble when he comes. The mountains, together with the foundations of the earth, are filled with dread before his sight. But nobody thinks of such things: who is interested in the ways of God? Most of his works go unnoticed and man does not see where the storm originates."

"The Lord created man from the earth and let him return to earth. He settled a fixed time for them and a set number of days, giving them power over everything on earth. He endowed them with a strength like his own, making them in his own image. He put the fear of them in all living things, thus they had mastery over the animals and birds. He endowed them with knowledge; he gave them tongue and eyes, ears and a mind to think with. He filled them with wisdom and knowledge; he taught them good and evil. He put his own eye in their hearts so they would understand the greatness of his works. They will praise his holy Name and relate the magnificence of his creation. He gave them revealed knowledge as well and handed over to them the Law of life. He established an everlasting covenant with them and let them know his judgments. Human eyes saw the splendor of the Glory of God; their ears heard the grandeur of his voice. He said to them, “Keep yourselves from all wrongdoing,” and to each of them he gave commands regarding his neighbor. Their conduct is always before the Lord; they cannot escape his sight. He has placed a leader over each nation, but Israel is the Lord’s own portion. Their deeds are as clear as the sun to him, he always observes their ways. Their misdeeds cannot be hidden from him, all their sins are before the Lord."

"He holds a man’s almsgiving dear as a priceless signet ring; he cherishes a good deed like the apple of his eye. One day he will rise and reward them; he will place their prize on their heads."

"He allows those who repent to return; he comforts those whose hopes are fading. Be converted to the Lord and give up your sins, plead with him to lessen your offense. Return to the Almighty, turn aside from wrongdoing and totally detest evil. For who in the grave will praise the Almighty, if the living do not give him glory? The dead man is as if he did not exist and cannot give praise; he who has life and health can praise the Lord. How great is the mercy of the Lord and his forgiveness for those who turn to him!"

"What is brighter than the sun? Yet it disappears. Man is no more than flesh and blood, yet he thinks of doing evil. While the sun surveys the stars in the lofty sky, human beings remain dust and ashes."

"What is man? What is his purpose? What is the good in him and what the bad? Take the length of his life: a hundred years is long. Like a drop of water from the sea, a grain of sand, such are his few years compared with eternity. For this reason, the Lord has patience with them and pours out his mercy on them. He sees and realizes how miserable their end is and so he heaps his forgiveness upon them. Man’s mercy is for his neighbor but the compassion of the Lord reaches all people; he rebukes, corrects, teaches and brings back his flock like a shepherd. He takes pity on those who accept correction and eagerly seek his will."

"Find out the facts before you speak; look after yourself before you become ill."

"Let nothing prevent you from fulfilling your vow on time; do not wait until death to put things in order."

"Prepare yourself before praying and do not be one of those who tempt the Lord. Keep in mind the justice of the last days; God will turn his face from you on the day of vengeance."

"When you experience abundance, remember the days of famine; when you enjoy riches, think of poverty and misery. Time slips by between morning and evening, all things pass quickly before the Lord."

"The prudent man is cautious in everything; when sin abounds he will keep away from wrongdoing. Every sensible man recognizes wisdom and respects those who obtain her. Those who speak sensibly are wise, and marvelous sayings flow from them."

"Do not let your passions rule you and restrain your desires. If you satisfy your lusts you will make yourself the laughingstock of your enemies."

"Do not take pleasure in great luxury, lest you become impoverished by its expense. Do not impoverish yourself by feasting on credit when you have nothing in your pocket."

"Wine and women corrupt the best of men; whoever frequents prostitutes loses all sense of shame."

"One who revels in pleasure will be condemned, hating gossip will save one from evil. Never repeat what you are told and you will come to no harm. Report nothing to friend or foe and, unless silence is sinful, reveal it to no one. They will listen, distrust you and you will end up being hated. Have you heard something? Let it die with you, remain calm; you will not burst with it. A fool suffers like a woman in childbirth over something he is told. Like an arrow stuck in his thigh, such is a secret inside a fool."

"Speak with your friend: perhaps he has done nothing and, if he has, he will not do it again. Speak with your friend: perhaps he has not said anything and, if he has, he will not say it again. Speak with your friend for there is much slander; do not believe all that you hear. Often, unintentional slips are made; for who has never sinned by evil tongues?"

"Speak with your neighbor before you heap accusations on him; then leave room for the Law of the Almighty."

"All wisdom is in the fear of the Lord; in all wisdom is the fulfillment of the Law. Knowledge of evil is not wisdom, and prudence is not found in the advice of sinners. There is a cleverness that is loathsome; it belongs to the evildoer who lacks wisdom. Better to lack sense and be full of the fear of the Lord, than to be clever in violating the Law."

"A man’s way of dressing reveals who he is, as does his manner of laughing and walking."

"One keeps silent and is thought to be wise, the other makes himself hated because of his gossiping. One remains silent because he does not know how to reply; the other keeps quiet, waiting for the right moment. The wise man keeps silent until the right moment; the chatterer and fool speak out of turn."

"Better to stumble on the ground than to make a slip with the tongue; this is how easily the wicked fall."

"Lying is a shameful defect in a man; fools are used to it. Better to be a thief than a liar, yet both are heading for disaster. Habitual lying is detestable; disgrace never leaves the liar."

"Presents and gifts blind a wise man’s eyes; like a muzzle they silence the conscientious."

"Concealed wisdom and hidden treasure: what good are these? The man who conceals his stupidity is better than one who conceals his wisdom."

"Have you sinned, my son? Do not do it again and beg forgiveness for your past sins. Escape from sin as you would from a snake; if you go near, it will bite you. Its teeth are like those of a lion and destroy human lives."

"Whoever hates correction goes the way of sinners; he who fears the Lord turns to him in his heart."

"The meeting of sinners is like a pile of rope which will go up in fire and flames. The path of sinners is well paved but it ends in the fiery abyss."

"He who keeps the Law is in control of his thoughts; the fear of the Lord brings wisdom."

"The man who is not clever will never be taught; but there is a cleverness which leads to bitterness. The wise man’s knowledge spreads out like a flood and his advice is like a spring."

"If an educated man hears a wise saying he values it and adds another. If the good-for nothing hears it he is annoyed and tosses it over his shoulder."

"Listening outside doors reveals a bad upbringing, the upright man would be ashamed of doing so."

"Strangers speak thoughtlessly of everything, while wise men’s words are carefully weighed. The heart of fools is in their mouth, but the mouth of the wise is in their heart."

"When the godless man curses his opponent, the curse descends on himself. The slanderer taints himself and makes himself hated by all around him."

"Weep for the dead man since the light has deserted him, weep for the fool because understanding has deserted him. Cry less for the dead man; he has found his rest but the fool’s life is worse than death."

"Mourning the dead lasts seven days, but it lasts a lifetime for the fool and godless man."

"Win your neighbor’s confidence when he is poor so that you may enjoy his goods with him when he grows rich; be loyal in his hour of trouble and you will win, in the end, a share in his inheritance."

"Children, learn how to control your language; if you are able to watch over it, you will not be taken by surprise."

"The sinner will be caught in his own words, as happens to the proud man and to him who curses."

"Remember your father and mother when you are sitting in the company of the great, lest you forget yourself in their presence and act like a fool. Then you would wish you had never been born, and curse the day of your birth."

"Those who obey me will not be put to shame; those who serve me will not fall into sin. All this is in the Bible, the Testament of the Most High God, the book of the Law which Moses entrusted to us, the inheritance of the congregations of Israel. This Law feeds the springs of wisdom, like the Pishon or Tigris in the season of fruit. Waters overflowing with understanding come from it, as from the Euphrates and Jordan at harvest time; the floods of instruction run like the Nile or the Gihon in time of vintage."

"Three things delight me and are delightful to God and people: agreement between brothers, friendship between neighbors, and perfect harmony between husband and wife."

"There are three kinds of persons whom I detest and whose existence I cast away from me: a poor man full of pride, a rich man who is a liar, and an adulterous old man who is a fool."

"I think of nine things which I consider happy and a tenth to which I will also refer: the man who finds his happiness in his children; the man who sees the ruin of his enemies in his lifetime. Happy the man who lives with a sensible wife; he who does not plow with a donkey and ox; he who has done no wrong in speech; he who does not serve an unworthy master. Happy he who has acquired good sense and is able to speak before an attentive audience!"

"Great is he who has gained wisdom, but no one surpasses the man who fears the Lord. Since the fear of the Lord excels everything, who can compare with the one who possesses it?"

"Better to live with a lion and a snake than to share a house with a wicked woman. Wickedness disfigures a woman’s appearance, it saddens the face, making her look like a bear. When her husband dines with his neighbor, he sighs bitterly, in spite of himself. All wickedness is nothing compared with a woman’s wickedness. Let her lot be that of a sinner! As a sandhill is to an old man’s feet, so is the talkative woman to her quiet husband. Do not be fooled by a woman’s beauty or fall in love with her. Expect anger, reproach and plenty of shame when the wife rules the husband. Dejected spirits, a sad face and unseen wounds, these are the work of a wicked woman. Idle hands and unsteady knees are found when a wife brings her husband no happiness. For sin began with woman and we all die because of the inheritance of the congregations of Israel. Do not let water leak out or give free rein to a wicked woman. If she does not do as you tell her, get rid of her."

"Happy the husband of a good wife, the number of his days will be doubled. A woman of character is her husband’s joy, he will live in peace all the years of his life. A good wife is the best of gifts, reserved for those who fear the Lord; rich or poor, he will have a serene heart and a happy face."

"Guard against the provocative woman and do not be surprised if she wishes to drag you into disgrace. She opens her mouth like a thirsty traveler to drink any water coming her way; she sits by any pole and opens her quiver to every arrow."

"A wife’s grace gladdens her husband and her prudence refreshes his body. A wife who knows how to be silent is a gift from the Lord; the well-trained wife is invaluable. A modest wife is a favor among favors; the chaste wife is priceless. Like the sun rising over the mountains of the Lord, such is the enchantment of a good wife in a well-kept house. Like the light which shines from the sacred lampstand, such is a beautiful face in a well-shaped body. Like pillars of gold on a silver base, such are beautiful legs on sturdy feet."

"Many sin for love of gain, he who desires riches silences his conscience. Just as the stake is settled between two stones, so sin wedges itself between buying and selling. The house of him who does not keep himself firmly in the fear of the Lord will soon be knocked to the ground."

"The wise man’s conversation follows wisdom all the time. In contrast, the fool changes like the moon. When among fools, be sparing with your time; among thoughtful people, be lavish with it."

"He who betrays a secret is no longer trusted; he will no longer find reliable friends. Love your friend and be loyal; if you have revealed his secrets, go with him no longer. It is like having lost some of your relatives: his friendship to you has died. Like a bird, you have let your friend go, you will not get him back. When you open your hand, the bird flies off; do not pursue him: he is far away and has fled like a gazelle from the snare. For a wound can be bandaged and an insult forgiven, but if you betray a secret there is no hope."

"He that diggeth a pit, shall fall into it: and he that setteth a stone for his neighbour, shall stumble upon it: and he that layeth a snare for another, shall perish in it."

"If you do evil, evil will befall you and you will not know from where it comes. The proud man makes use of mockery and insults, but vengeance lies in wait for him like a lion."

"Those who gloat over the downfall of good men will fall into the snare; suffering will consume them before they die."

"Grudge and wrath, these also are abominations in which sinful people excel."

"Cursed be the gossiper with his spiteful tongue. He has destroyed many who lived peacefully. The vicious tongue has demolished many and hounded them from nation to nation. It has ruined powerful cities and laid low great households. The vicious tongue has cast out wives who were beyond reproach, depriving them of the fruit of their work. Whoever listens to it will never find rest or be able to live in peace. The whip leaves a mark but the lash of the tongue shatters bones. Many have been felled by the sword but many more have perished by the tongue. Happy he who has escaped it and has not been exposed to its fury, who has not been weighed down by its yoke or been tied up in its chains."

"Lending to your neighbor is an act of mercy, going to his aid fulfills the commandments. Learn to lend to your neighbor when he is in need and, in turn, repay him any loan on time."

"Keep your word, remain faithful and you will find what you need on every occasion."

"Many a good person refuses to lend, not for any malicious reason: he is afraid of being cheated without cause. Nevertheless, be kind to those who have fallen on hard times, do not keep them waiting for your help. For the commandments’ sake, help the poor man; see his need and do not turn him away empty-handed."

"Better to spend your money on a brother or friend than to let it rust under a stone, to your discredit."

"Use your money according to the commandments of the Most High and you will find it more valuable than gold. Fill your barns with good deeds and these will rescue you from misfortune. They will fight for you against your enemy better than any strong shield and mighty spear."

"Some things you cannot live without: water, bread, clothes and a house for shelter. Better a poor man’s life in his wooden shack than lavish banquets in another man’s house. Be content with whatever you have, be it great or small; this is better than to go elsewhere and be reproached as an outsider."

"The man who loves his son makes use of the rod; later on he will be proud of him. The man who corrects his son will reap the benefit and be proud of him among his acquaintances. By instructing his son he makes his enemy envious; he will be well pleased with him in the company of his friends. If such a father dies it is as if he had not died, for he leaves behind him another man like himself. In life he had the joy of his company and he is not sorrowful when death comes. He leaves it to his family to take revenge on his enemies and to return gifts to his friends."

"The man who coddles his son will be constantly bandaging his wounds; at his every cry he will be troubled. Just as a badly broken-in horse cannot be mounted, so a spoiled son becomes insolent. Pamper your child and later he will terrify you; play with him and he will bring you sorrow. Do not laugh at him lest you have to suffer and grind your teeth. Do not let him be independent as a child, but rather bruise his ribs while he is still young, lest he grow stubborn and refuse to obey. Be strict with your son and persevere in this, so as not to suffer because of his misconduct."

"Better a poor man healthy and fit, than a rich man tormented in body. Health and vigor are worth more than gold, a robust body, more than great wealth. No riches are preferable to physical wellbeing, and no joy is greater than a cheerful heart."

"Jealousy and anger shorten your life; worry makes you old before the time."

"He who loves gold cannot be righteous; whoever runs after gain will be led astray. Many have been ruined because of gold; disgrace went to meet them. Gold is a snare for those who are possessed by love of it. The senseless will be caught in it."

"Happy is the rich man who has not sinned in this way and has not gone after gold! Who is he? Let us say: Fortunate man! For he has given a wonderful example. Who has been tested in this and found perfect? He has reason to be proud. Who could have sinned but resisted, who could have done wrong and did not do it? His fortune is firmly established and the assembly will acknowledge his generosity."

"Are you seated at a lavish banquet? Don’t be over-ready to eat and don’t say, “What a feast!” Remember that a greedy eye is an evil thing. What is worse than such an eye? That is why it was condemned to weep. Do not stretch out your hand to everything you see or be quick in reaching for a dish. Judge the needs of your fellow guest by your own and in all things act prudently. Eat what is set before you like an educated person and don’t be a glutton, lest you be detested. Like a well-mannered man, be the first to stop; don’t be voracious if you are to avoid difficulties. If important people are present, do not be the first to serve yourself. A little is sufficient for a well-bred person; your breathing moreover will be easier when you go to bed. Healthy sleeping is for the moderate eater. He rises early and feels fit! Sleeplessness and stomach trouble attend the overindulgent. If you are obliged to eat too much, go off and vomit and you will be at ease. Listen to me, my friend, and do not neglect what I say; in the end you will see the truth of it. Be moderate in all that you do and you will be without illness."

"Do not try to show how much wine you can take, for wine has been the ruin of many. As the furnace tests the temper of steel, so wine proves hearts and makes proud men quarrel. Wine is life for man if taken in moderation. What is life without wine? Wine makes for a glad heart and a cheerful mind, if taken moderately and at the right time. But if taken to excess it brings bitterness of soul, excitement and a fumbling step. Drunkenness inflames the anger of a stupid person to the point of scandal. It reduces his strength and brings him blows. Do not reproach a neighbor during a wine feast, and don’t look down on him when he is merry; do not speak harshly to him or annoy him by asking him to settle a debt."

"Whoever fears the Lord will accept his correction, and those who rise at dawn will win his favor. The man who follows his Law will be nourished by it, but the hypocrite will find it a stumbling block. Those who fear the Lord will please him and their good deeds will shine as a light."

"The sinner refuses correction and excuses himself for doing what he wants."

"A person of judgment reflects beforehand; the stubborn and proud man goes ahead without worrying about anything. Never act without first reflecting, and you will have no regrets."

"Be careful in whatever you do. In so doing you keep the commandments. Those who trust in the Law will keep the commandments and those who obey the Lord will come to no harm."

"Evil will not go to meet the one who fears the Lord; if he is in danger he will be rescued. The wise man never departs from the Law; he who only pretends to keep it is like a storm-tossed boat. An intelligent man has faith in the Law, which for him is as trustworthy as an oracle."

"If you want people to listen to you, prepare what you have to say; recall what you have learned before you give an answer."

"Why is one day holier than another, when the light of the sun shines on every day of the year? By the Lord’s decision they were made different; he arranged the different seasons and feasts. Some of these he chose to make holy, others he made ordinary days. All human beings come from clay just as Adam himself was formed. In the fullness of his wisdom the Lord made each one unique and diversified his conditions. Some he made holy, keeping them near to himself. Others he cursed and humiliated, removing them from where they were. As clay in the hand of the potter to be molded as he pleases, so are all in the hands of the Creator to be dealt with as he sees fit."

"The spirit of those who fear the Lord will live, for their hope is placed in the One who saves. He who fears the Lord is in dread of nothing. He will not be cowardly for he is his hope. He who fears the Lord is a happy person. To whom does he turn? Who is his support? The eyes of the Lord are on those who love him. For them he is powerful protection, strong support, shelter against scorching wind and the midday sun. He is a safeguard against stumbling and assurance against a fall. He lifts up the soul and gives a sparkle to the eyes; he gives healing, life and blessing."

"Offering to God from what belongs to the poor is like slaughtering a son in the presence of his father."

"Bread is life to the poor; he who takes it from them is a murderer."

"He who deprives others of a livelihood kills them, and whoever withdraws the salary of a worker is guilty of blood. If one builds and the other destroys, what do they gain besides trouble? If one prays and the other curses, whose voice will the Master listen to?"

"If a man is cleansed after touching a corpse and then touches it again, what good was there in his cleansing? If anyone fasts for his sins and then commits the same sins, who will hear his prayer? What value is there in his fasting?"

"Keeping the Law is worth many offerings. Being faithful to the commandments is like a peace offering. Returning kindness is an offering of fine flour; giving alms is a sacrifice of praise. Renouncing sin pleases the Lord, and shunning injustice is a sacrifice of atonement."

"Give to the Most High as he has given to you; give generously to the Lord according to what you have; the Lord will repay, he will reward you sevenfold."

"The Lord is judge and shows no partiality. He will not disadvantage the poor, he who hears the prayer of the oppressed. He does not disdain the plea of the orphan, nor the complaint of the widow. When tears flow down her cheeks, is she not crying out against the one who caused her to weep?"

"The one who serves God wholeheartedly will be heard; his petition will reach the clouds. The prayer of the humble person pierces the clouds, and he is not consoled until he has been heard. His prayer will not cease until the Most High has looked down, until justice has been done in favor of the righteous."

"A woman will accept any husband but some daughters are better than others. Woman’s beauty rejoices people and is beyond all that could be wished for. If she is kindly-spoken and gentle he is the most fortunate of men. When a man marries he acquires a fortune, someone who understands him and who will help and support him. When there is no hedge the property will be destroyed; and when a man has no wife he is a fretful wanderer. Who would trust a clever robber flitting from town to town? And who would trust a man without a nest, who lodges wherever nightfall finds him?"

"Every friend says, “I am your friend, too,” but some friends are only friends in name. Is it not a deadly grief when a companion or friend turns into an enemy? O evil intention! From where have you sprung, to cover the earth with deceit? One kind of comrade takes advantage of his friend’s good fortune; in time of trouble he turns against him. Another kind shares his friend’s suffering, for the sake of a meal; when it comes to a fight, he thinks only of saving himself. Do not neglect a friend or forget him once you are wealthy."

"Do not seek advice from one who looks at you suspiciously; hide your plans from those who envy you."

"Do not consult a woman about her rival, or a coward about war, or a merchant about exchange rates, or a buyer about selling, or a jealous man about gratitude, or a selfish person about generosity, or an idler about any kind of work, or a casual worker about finishing a job, or a lazy servant about an important task. Do not rely on these people for any advice."

"In the end, keep to your own heart’s advice, since no one deserves to be trusted more than your heart. For a man’s soul often gives better advice than seven watchmen placed on a height. Besides all this, implore the Almighty to guide your steps in the truth. A plan must be at the beginning of all work; reflection comes before every action. When you decide, four ways are open before you: good, evil, life and death. Your own decision makes the choice."

"The truly wise man teaches his people, and they benefit by his knowledge. The wise man is full of blessings; those who see him call him happy."

"My son, test yourself during the course of your life; see what is harmful and avoid it. For everything does not suit everybody, nor is everyone satisfied with all things. Do not be insatiable in every pleasure, or be excessive in what you eat; for overeating leads to sickness and gluttony brings indigestion. Many have died because of gluttony; he who takes care prolongs his life."

"A law student acquires wisdom during his leisure hours; free from business he is capable of becoming wise. How can the man who guides a plow become wise, he whose pride lies in snapping a whip and driving a bullock, who works continually and talks of nothing but cattle? His heart is set on plowing furrows and all his attention is given to fattening heifers."

"Quite different is it with the person who spends his life reflecting on the Law of the Most High. He examines the wisdom of the sages in times past and in his free time he studies prophecies. He keeps in mind what people of renown have said and penetrates the mystery of parables. He searches for the inner meaning of proverbs and is interested in the secret of parables. He is at the service of the great and is seen in the company of leaders. He travels in foreign lands and has experience of both the good and the evil in mankind. Early in the morning his heart is set on turning to the Lord, his Maker, and raising his being to the Most High. He opens his mouth in prayer and makes supplication because of his sins. If such is the will of the great Lord he will be filled with the spirit of discernment. He will then speak words of wisdom and celebrate the Lord in prayer. He will acquire just judgment and knowledge and reflect on the Lord’s hidden mysteries."

"How magnificent are the works of the Lord! All his commands are appropriately timed and satisfy every need. No one should say: “What is this? Why is that?” All must be studied in its time. At his word the waters ceased to flow and piled up, his voice caused the reservoir of water to open; at his order his every wish is fulfilled, and no one hinders his work of salvation. The deeds of all are before him, nothing is hidden from his eyes; he sees all from eternity to eternity and nothing surprises him."

"No one must say: “What is that? Why is it so?” for everything is created for a purpose."

"For that reason I reflected and from the beginning I decided to write: All the works of the Lord are good and he will satisfy every need in due time. You must not say: This is less good than that, for in its time everything will serve a purpose. So now, with all your heart and in full voice, sing and bless the Name of the Lord."

"Painful is the lot of all humans, a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day they leave their mother’s womb to the day they return to the mother of us all. What is on their mind, what they fear in their heart, is the day of their death. From the king, glorious on his throne, robed in purple and wearing a crown, to the lowliest person sitting in dust and ashes and covered with sackcloth, there is anger, envy, trouble and unrest, fear of death, rivalry and quarrels."

"Everything that comes from the earth goes back to the earth, and what comes from the waters returns to the sea."

"All bribery, all injustice will disappear but good faith will last forever."

"The unjust riches will vanish like a stream that dries up; they will crash like a clap of thunder during a downpour. A generous man has reason to rejoice, whereas sinners go to their ruin."

"The name of a man who has children or who has established a town will live on, but to have found wisdom is a greater good. Owning cattle and plantations brings fame, but a perfect wife is a richer blessing."

"It is always good for friends and companions to meet, better still for husband and wife."

"Brothers and protectors are useful in hard times, but it will be of greater help to have been a giver of alms."

"Gold and silver make for security but good advice is better. Wealth and strength give confidence, but good counsel is more esteemed than either. You cannot suffer loss when you fear the Lord, with it you have all the support you need. The fear of the Lord is like a garden of blessings; it clothes a person better than any glory."

"Death! What a bitter thought for someone who lives happily among his possessions, a prosperous and successful man who is still able to enjoy his food! Your sentence, Death, is welcome to a needy person whose strength is failing, who is old, worn out, and full of worries; to one who is angry and without hope! Do not be afraid of Death’s sentence; think of those who have gone before you and those who will follow. The Lord has decreed it for every living creature; why should you rebel against the good pleasure of the Most High? Whether you live for ten, a hundred or a thousand years, no one in the netherworld is concerned."

"Abominable people, such are the children of sinners who gather in the houses of the ungodly. The inheritance of sinners will perish; their prosperity will be a lasting reproach. An ungodly father will be insulted by his children, for they hold him responsible for their disgrace."

"Woe to you, wicked people who have forsaken the law of the Most High! At birth you are born to be cursed and you will be cursed at death. All that comes from the earth returns to the earth, and the ungodly go from curse to ruin."

"Have regard for your reputation, for it will live on, of greater value than a thousand hoards of gold. Few perhaps are the days of the just man’s life but an honored name endures forever."

"My children, keep my teaching and live in peace. Of what use is hidden wisdom and unseen treasure? It is better for a man to hide his foolishness than to hide his wisdom."

"Therefore, feel shame according to what I say. It is not always fitting to feel shame, but this is not understood by everyone. Be ashamed of licentiousness before your father and mother, and of a lie before a ruler or an important person. Be ashamed of criminal behavior before a judge, and of iniquity before an assembly of people. Feel ashamed of dishonesty before your partner or friend, and of a theft in the place where you live. Be ashamed before the truth of God and his covenant. Be ashamed of keeping the loaves for yourself, of being unable to give and to receive, of not returning a greeting, of staring at a prostitute, of rejecting a compatriot, of depriving someone of what is his, of gazing at another man’s wife, of being too familiar with your maidservant– keep away from her bed! of insulting words to a friend – do not follow up a gift with a reproach! of repeating what you have heard and betraying secrets. On these occasions feel genuine shame and you will be respected by all."

"Do not be ashamed of correcting someone who is foolish or stupid or an old man who has become childish. Doing that, you prove that you are a well-educated person and you will be generally respected."

"Do not be taken by human beauty and do not sit down in the company of women; for just as a moth comes out of a garment, woman’s wickedness comes out of a woman. Better a man’s wickedness than a woman’s kindness; women bring shame and disgrace."

"He penetrates both the depth of the abyss and the human heart and knows their secrets. For the Most High has full knowledge and ordains the signs of the heavens. He knows the past and foretells the future and reveals the traces of the world’s mysteries. No thought escapes him, no word is hidden from him."

"Thanks be to God, all turns out well and everything is held together by his word. We shall not give further examples; one last word: He is everything. Where shall we find the strength to glorify him? For he is the Mighty One, greater than all his works. The Lord is awesome and sovereignly great, and admirable in his power. Let your praise exalt the Lord as best you can, he is greater than you could even express. Honor him with all your strength and do not tire, for you can never praise him enough. Who has seen him and can describe what he has seen? Who can glorify him as he merits? Many mysteries greater than these still remain, for we have only seen a fraction of his works."

"The Lord has created all things and to the godly he has given wisdom."

"But now consider the godly men whose good deeds have not been forgotten. Those who came after them benefited from the rich legacy they left; their race remained faithful to the Covenant, their children followed their example. Their family will endure forever and never will its glory be tarnished. Their bodies were buried in peace but their memory lives through generations. People will speak of their wisdom and the assembly will celebrate their praise."

"No one has been found to equal Abraham in glory, the great ancestor of many nations. He was faithful to the Law of the Most High who made a covenant with him, a covenant that was marked on his flesh, and on the day he was tested he was found faithful. That is why God promised by oath to bless all the nations through his descendants, that he would make them as numerous as the dust of the earth and exalt his posterity like the stars. He promised that their land would stretch from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth."

"After him the Lord raised Nathan to prophesy in the time of David. As fat is selected from the peace offering, so David was chosen from among the Israelites. He played with lions and bears as if they were lambs or young goats. He was still young when he slew a giant to restore the honor of his people; with a sling he aimed a stone that killed the arrogant Goliath. He invoked the Lord Most High, who gave him strength to slay a mighty warrior, and so exalt the power of his people. So they glorified him for his ten thousands and praised him as a blessing from the Lord when he was chosen king. For he wiped out his enemies on all sides and annihilated his adversaries, the Philistines, crushing their power forever. In all that he did he gave thanks to the Most High, and showed his love for his Maker by singing with all his heart. He placed singers accompanied by harps before the altar to make beautiful music; he gave splendor to feasts and even greater magnificence to the more solemn occasions, exalting the holy Name of the Lord and having the sanctuary ring with his praises from early morning."

"No one on earth was created to equal Enoch for he was taken up from the earth. And never was there a man like Joseph, the greatest among his brothers, the leader of his people; his bones were honored. Shem and Seth were exalted among men, but Adam’s glory was greater than any other living being."

"Instruction in understanding and knowledge, that is what Jesus the son of Sira, the son of Eleazar of Jerusalem, has written in this book as he poured out the wisdom of his heart. Happy the one who pays attention to this teaching and gains wisdom by taking it to heart. Doing that, he will be strong in all circumstances, for the light of the Lord is his path."

"Be instructed, whatever the cost, and you will gain what is better than gold. Let your soul find joy in the mercy of the Lord, and do not be ashamed to praise him. Do your work within the appointed time, and the Lord in his time will give you your reward."

"If you want in on the Discordian Society then declare yourself what you wish do what you like and tell us about it or if you prefer don't."

"There are no rules anywhere. The Goddess Prevails."

"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense."

"Curb Your Dogma."

"The Enlightened take things Lightly."

"-JOSHUA NORTON CABAL - Surrealists, Harlequinists, Absurdists and Zonked Artists Melee"

"POEE is one manifestation of the DISCORDIAN SOCIETY about which you will learn more and understand less We are a tribe of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists, clowns, and similar maniacs who are intrigued with ERIS GODDESS OF CONFUSION and with Her Doings."

"POEE (Pronounced "POEE") is an acronym for the PARATHEO-ANAMETAMYSTIKHOOD OF ERIS ESOTERIC. The first part can be taken to mean "equivalent deity, reversing beyond-mystique". We are not really esoteric, it's just that nobody pays much attention to us."

"Be Ye Not Lost Among Precepts of Order…-The Book of Uterus 1:5"

"Some excerpts from an interview with Malaclypse the Younger by THE GREATER METROPOLITAN YORBA LINDA HERALD-NEWS-SUN-TRIBUNE-JOURNAL-DISPATCH-POST AND SAN FRANCISCO DISCORDIAN SOCIETY CABAL BULLETIN AND INTERGALACTIC REPORT & POPE POOP. GREATER POOP: Are you really serious or what? MAL-2: Sometimes I take humor seriously. Sometimes I take seriousness humorously. Either way it is irrelevant."

"GP: Maybe you are just crazy. M2: Indeed! But do not reject these teachings as false because I am crazy. The reason that I am crazy is because they are true. GP: Is Eris true? M2: Everything is true. GP: Even false things? M2: Even false things are true. GP: How can that be? M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it. GP: Why do you deal with so many negatives? M2: To dissolve them. GP: Will you develop that point? M2: No."

"GP: Is there an essential meaning behind POEE? M2: There is a Zen Story about a student who asked a Master to explain the meaning of Buddhism. The Master's reply was "Three pounds of flax." GP: Is that the answer to my question? M2: No, of course not. That is just illustrative. The answer to your question is FIVE TONS OF FLAX!"

"Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter."

"The Law of Fives is one of the oldest Erisian Mysterees. It was first revealed to Good Lord Omar and is one of the great contributions to come from the Hidden Temple of the Happy Jesus."

"POEE also recognizes the holy 23 (2+3=5) that is incorporated by Episkopos Dr. Mordecai Malignatius, KNS, into his Discordian sect, the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria."

"The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO FIVE. The Law of Fives is never wrong. In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look.""

"I - There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm."

"II - A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System."

"III - A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns)."

"IV - A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub."

"V - A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads. IT IS SO WRITTEN! SO BE IT. HAIL DISCORDIA! PROSECUTORS WILL BE TRANSGRESSICUTED."

"The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't."

"IT IS MY FIRM BELIEF THAT IT IS A MISTAKE TO HOLD FIRM BELIEFS."

"In the year 1166 B.C., a malcontented hunchbrain by the name of Greyface, got it into his head that the universe was as humorless as he, and he began to teach that play was sinful because it contradicted the ways of Serious Order. "Look at all that order about you," he said. And from that, he deluded honest men to believe that reality was a straightjacket affair and not the happy romance as men had known it. It is not presently understood why men were so gullible at that particular time, for absolutely no one thought to observe all the DISORDER around them and conclude just the opposite. But anyway, Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were not unknown even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own. The unfortunate result of this is that mankind has since been suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance. Imbalance causes frustration, and frustration causes fear. And fear makes a bad trip. Man has been on a bad trip for a long time now.It is called THE CURSE OF GREYFACE."

"To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder."

"The Curse of Greyface included the division of life into order/disorder as the essential positive/negative polarity, instead of building a game foundation with creative/destructive as the essential positive/negative. He has thereby caused man to endure the destructive aspects of order and has prevented man from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder. Civilization reflects this unfortunate division."

"POEE proclaims that the other division is preferable, and we work toward the proposition that creative disorder, like creative order, is possible and desirable; and that destructive order, like destructive disorder, is unnecessary and undesirable."

"FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT by Rev. Dr. Hypocrates Magoun, P.P. POEE PRIEST, Okinawa Cabal When Hypoc was through meditating with St. Gulik, he went there into the kitchen where he busied himself with preparing the feast and in his endeavor, he found that there was some old tea in a pan left standing from the night before, when he had, in his weakness, forgot about its making and had let it sit steeping for 24 hours. It was dark and murky and it was Hypoc's intention to use this old tea by diluting it with water. And again in his weakness, chose without further consideration and plunged into the physical labor of the preparations. It was then when deeply immersed in the pleasure of that trip, he had a sudden loud clear voice in his head, saying: "It is bitter tea that involves you so." Hypoc heard the voice, but the struggle inside intensified, and the pattern, previously established with the physical laboring and the muscle messages coordinated and unified or perhaps coded, continued to exert their influence and Hypoc succumbed to the pressure and he denied the voice. And again he plunged into the physical orgy and completed the task, and Lo! As the voice had predicted, the tea was bitter."

"NONSENSE AS SALVATION The human race will begin solving its problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously. To that end, POEE proposes the countergame of NONSENSE AS SALVATION. Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES. To this end, we propose that man develop his innate love for disorder, and play with The Goddess Eris. And know that it is a joyful play, and that thereby CAN BE REVOKED THE CURSE OF GREYFACE."

"If you can master nonsense as well as you have already learned to master sense, then each will expose the other for what it is: absurdity. From that moment of illumination, a man begins to be free regardless of his surroundings. He becomes free to play order games and change them at will. He becomes free to play disorder games just for the hell of it. He becomes free to play neither or both. And as the master of his own games, he plays without fear, and therefore without frustration, and therefore with good will in his soul and love in his being."

"And when men become free then mankind will be free. May you be free of The Curse of Greyface. May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes. May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. Hail Eris."

"THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A GENUINE AND AUTHORIZED ~ POPE ~ So please Treat Him Right GOOD FOREVER Genuine and authorized by The House of Apostles of ERIS Every man, woman and child on this Earth is a genuine and authorized Pope -Reproduce and distribute these cards freely- POEE Head Temple, San Francisco A =POPE= is someone who is not under the authority of the authorities."

"THE SACRED CHAO is the key to illumination. Devised by the Apostle Hung Mung in ancient China, it was modified and popularized by the Taoists and is sometimes called the YIN-YANG. The Sacred Chao is not the Yin-Yang of the Taoists. It is the HODGE-PODGE of the Erisians. And, instead of a Podge spot on the Hodge side, it has a PENTAGON which symbolizes the ANERISTIC PRINCIPLE, and instead of a Hodge spot on the Podge side, it depicts the GOLDEN APPLE OF DISCORDIA to symbolize the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE."

"The Sacred Chao symbolizes absolutely everything anyone need ever know about absolutely anything, and more! It even symbolizes everything not worth knowing, depicted by the empty space surrounding the Hodge-Podge."

"HERE FOLLOWS SOME PSYCHO-METAPHYSICS. If you are not hot for philosophy, best just skip it."

"The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Erisitic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made CONCEPTS and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making. With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept. We look through the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other. DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE. The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the ERISTIC ILLUSION."

"The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered."

"Reality is the original Rorschach."

"Before he became a hermit, Zaruthud was a young priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted the Sacred Chao while She was contently grazing. "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile. What is your Purpose in life, anyway?" Munching the tasty grass, the Sacred Chao replied "MU". Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because no one could understand Chinese."

"This being the 4th Edition, March 1970, San Francisco; a revision of the 3rd Edition of 500 copies, whomped together in Tampa 1969; which revised the 2nd Edition of 100 copies from Los Angeles 1969; which was a revision of "PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA or HOW THE WEST WAS LOST" published in New Orleans in 1965 in five copies, which were mostly lost."

"If you think the PRINCIPIA is just a ha-ha, then go read it again."

"Ⓚ ALL RITES REVERSED - Reprint what you like"

"If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe."

"Remember: KING KONG Died for your Sins"

"Momomoto, famous Japanese, can swallow his nose."

"Bullshit makes the flowers grow & that's beautiful."

"One day, I came upon a man urinating in a bus station. When I confronted him about his action, he turned to me, without stopping, and said:"

"The foregoing document was revealed to Mal-2 by the Goddess Herself through many consultations with Her within his Pineal Gland. It is guaranteed to be the Word of Goddess. However, it is only fair to state that Goddess doesn't always say the same thing to each listener, and that other Episkoposes are sometimes told quite different things in their Revelations, which are also the Word of Goddess. Consequently, if you prefer a Discordian Sect other than POEE, then none of these Truths are binding, and it is a rotten shame that you have read all the way down to the very last word."

"Before I was a Discordian, I took life much too seriously. When you take life too seriously you start to wonder what the point of it all is. When you wonder what the point is in life, you fall into a trap of thinking there is one. When you think there is a point, you finally realize there is no point. And what point is there in living like that? Nowadays I skip the search for a point and find, instead, the punch lines."

"This time there will be no failure, no loss of truth, no misunderstanding and no misrepresentation I will direct its growth as it reaches from the paper on which it was written into the hearts for which it was intended."

"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary … you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal."

"Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation."

"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle."

"All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know."

"Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided."

"Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong."

"Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."

"The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose."

"Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."

"Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual."

"Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future."

"Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind."

"Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning."

"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver."

"Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. It reflects the original form of communication between God and His creations, involving the extremely personal sense of creation sometimes sought in physical relationships. Physical closeness cannot achieve it. Miracles, however, are genuinely interpersonal, and result in true closeness to others. Revelation unites you directly with God. Miracles unite you directly with your brother. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced there. Consciousness is the state that induces action, though it does not inspire it. You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe."

""No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up," I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it. This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater."

""Heaven and earth shall pass away" means that they will not continue to exist as separate states. My word, which is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass away because life is eternal. You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is."

"The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations."

"The escape from darkness involves two stages: First, the recognition that darkness cannot hide. This step usually entails fear. Second, the recognition that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could. This step brings escape from fear. When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy."

"The Origins of Separation. To extend is a fundamental aspect of God which He gave to His Son. In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. You have not only been fully created, but have also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in you. Because of your likeness to your Creator you are creative. No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately by projecting. The inappropriate use of extension, or projection, occurs when you believe that some emptiness or lack exists in you, and that you can fill it with your own ideas instead of truth."

"A further point must be perfectly clear before any residual fear still associated with miracles can disappear. The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did. Many sincere Christians have misunderstood this. No one who is free of the belief in scarcity could possibly make this mistake. If the crucifixion is seen from an upside-down point of view, it does appear as if God permitted and even encouraged one of His Sons to suffer because he was good. This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose out of projection, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God. Such anti-religious concepts enter into many religions. Yet the real Christian should pause and ask, "How could this be?" Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His Own words have clearly stated is unworthy of His Son?"

"The best defense, as always, is not to attack another's position, but rather to protect the truth. It is unwise to accept any concept if you have to invert a whole frame of reference in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications and genuinely tragic on a wider scale. Persecution frequently results in an attempt to "justify" the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His Own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless. It has been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error itself is no harder to correct than any other, many have been unwilling to give it up in view of its prominent value as a defense. In milder forms a parent says, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe our Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be sure that nothing of this kind remains in your mind. I was not "punished" because you were bad."

"The statement "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" is a misperception by which one assigns his own "evil" past to God. The "evil" past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it and He does not maintain it. God does not believe in retribution. His Mind does not create that way. He does not hold your "evil" deeds against you. Is it likely that He would hold them against me? Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumption is, and how entirely it arises from projection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related errors, including the belief that God rejected Adam and forced him out of the Garden of Eden. It is also why you may believe from time to time that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but it is always possible to twist symbols around if you wish."

"You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment."

"The Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as far as he asks. It certainly does not suggest that you set him back on his journey. Devotion to a brother cannot set you back either. It can lead only to mutual progress. The result of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which properly understood is the opposite of fatigue. To be fatigued is to be dis-spirited, but to be inspired is to be in the spirit. To be egocentric is to be dis-spirited, but to be Self-centered in the right sense is to be inspired or in spirit. The truly inspired are enlightened and cannot abide in darkness."

"You can speak from the spirit or from the ego, as you choose. If you speak from spirit you have chosen to "Be still and know that I am God." These words are inspired because they reflect knowledge. If you speak from the ego you are disclaiming knowledge instead of affirming it, and are thus dis-spiriting yourself. Do not embark on useless journeys, because they are indeed in vain. The ego may desire them, but spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling to depart from its Foundation."

"The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey." Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted."

"Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it."

"To heal is to make happy. I have told you to think how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many you have refused. This is the same as telling you that you have refused to heal yourself. The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not associated with sorrow. Joy calls forth an integrated willingness to share it, and promotes the mind's natural impulse to respond as one. Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call forth different kinds of responses at the same time, and thus deprive others of the joy of responding wholeheartedly."

"To be wholehearted you must be happy. If fear and love cannot coexist, and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, the only possible whole state is that of love. There is no difference between love and joy. Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous. To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and to make one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the Sonship the healing is offered. Every part benefits, and benefits equally."

"You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude. You need not know them individually, or they you. The light is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy upon it. Only God's holy children are worthy channels of His beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor except as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is: Let me know this brother as I know myself."

"[The Course in miniature] I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace. I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparent. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one's own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love must follow. What can be expected from insane premises except an insane conclusion? The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe."

"You have been asked to take me as your model for learning, since an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility you inevitably assume the moment you accept any premise at all, and no one can organize his life without some thought system. Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it. Your capacity for allegiance to a thought system may be misplaced, but it is still a form of faith and can be redirected."

"The Message of the Crucifixion. For learning purposes, let us consider the crucifixion again. I did not dwell on it before because of the fearful connotations you may associate with it. The only emphasis laid upon it so far has been that it was not a form of punishment. Nothing, however, can be explained in negative terms only. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion that is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. I have also told you that the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified then. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher."

"Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot be totally committed sometimes."

"Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost the awareness of all of it. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts."

"When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it except by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions. What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but because you have denied it in another and are therefore not aware of it in yourself."

"Every response you make is determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make."

"You do not need God's blessing because that you have forever, but you do need yours. The ego's picture of you is deprived, unloving and vulnerable. You cannot love this. Yet you can very easily escape from this image by leaving it behind. You are not there and that is not you. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you have accepted it as you. All illusions about the Sonship are dispelled together as they were made together. Teach no one that he is what you would not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you see the image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception will last until the Sonship knows itself as whole. You made perception and it must last as long as you want it."

"Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. This is the prerequisite for knowledge only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom."

"Knowledge can be restored only when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of an imaginary will that is not His. Knowledge is His Will. If you are opposing His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but perhaps you do not yet regard this as wholly desirable. If you did you would not be so ready to throw it away when the ego asks for your allegiance."

"The distractions of the ego may seem to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power to do so."

"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say "I am not real." Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality that you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make. Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what you give up? You share to have, but you do not give it up yourself."

"When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself from it. This is a condition so alien to the Kingdom that you cannot understand the state that prevails within it."

"Your past learning must have taught you the wrong things, simply because it has not made you happy. On this basis alone its value should be questioned. If learning aims at change, and that is always its purpose, are you satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes is a sign of learning failure, since it means that you did not get what you wanted."

"The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourself, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary. The first change to be introduced is a change in direction. A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diametrically opposed ideas, it cannot be integrated. If it is carried out by these two teachers simultaneously, each one merely interferes with the other."

"Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs the human mind has ever made. It could not possibly have occurred unless the mind were already profoundly split, making it possible for it to be afraid of what it really is. Reality cannot "threaten" anything except illusions, since reality can only uphold truth. The very fact that the Will of God, which is what you are, is perceived as fearful, demonstrates that you are afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the Will of God of which you are afraid, but yours."

"Your will is not the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you. What seems to be the fear of God is really the fear of your own reality. It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state of panic. If the purpose of this course is to help you remember what you are, and if you believe that what you are is fearful, then it must follow that you will not learn this course. Yet the reason for the course is that you do not know what you are."

"Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything happening to you is caused by factors outside yourself. You must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you. You can violate God's laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your protection and are as inviolate as your safety."

"God created nothing beside you and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him can exist? Nothing beyond Him can happen, because nothing except Him is real. Your creations add to Him as you do, but nothing is added that is different because everything has always been. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real if you are God's only creation and He created you eternal? Your holy mind establishes everything that happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of it."

"God does not change His Mind about you, for He is not uncertain of Himself. And what He knows can be known, because He does not know it only for Himself. He created you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for yourself so you would be like Him. That is why your mind is holy. Can anything exceed the Love of God? Can anything, then, exceed your will? Nothing can reach you from beyond it because, being in God, you encompass everything. Believe this, and you will realize how much is up to you. When anything threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself, "Has God changed His Mind about me?" Then accept His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change your mind about yourself. God will never decide against you, or He would be deciding against Himself."

"Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them. Nothing alive is Fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, "Who is my father?" And you will be faithful to the father you choose."

"Yet what would you say to someone who believed this question really involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict, because the ego was made out of the wish of God's Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand. You make by projection, but God creates by extension. The cornerstone of God's creation is you, for His thought system is light. Remember the Rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought system, the clearer the light becomes."

"You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth."

"The analysis of ego motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never without your own ego involvement. The whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct. You may then control your reactions behaviorally, but not emotionally. This would obviously be a split or an attack on the integrity of your mind, pitting one level within it against another."

"There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgment it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes."

"Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother's plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as you see fit. Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent."

"If you believe that an appeal for help is something else you will react to something else. Your response will therefore be inappropriate to reality as it is, but not to your perception of it."

"There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are except your own imagined need to attack. It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it unreal. You would not do this except for your unwillingness to accept reality as it is, and which you therefore withhold from yourself."

"It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand."

"No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be."

"If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it. To fail to recognize a call for help is to refuse help. Would you maintain that you do not need it? Yet this is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you be helped. Deny him your help and you will not recognize God's Answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His."

"Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly."

"If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and escape the penalty of denial."

"For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane. The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God's Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more."

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no Father could subject His children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could conceive of it. Adam's "sin" could have touched no one, had he not believed it was the Father Who drove him out of Paradise. For in that belief the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only those who do not understand Him could believe it."

"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is not guilty. He deserves only love because he has given only love. He cannot be condemned because he has never condemned. The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation."

"Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."

"We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming clearness seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from them, and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and only truth."

"If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired for it is they that have been thrown away. You can learn to bless, and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away? That is why miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If what you offer is complete forgiveness you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, unknown to you, unless you do what you would have to do if it had been done for you?"

"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity."

"Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. The thoughts the mind of God's Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything."

"Any direction that would lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny that He knows to be true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father does not share with you. You have set yourself the task of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to learn to do."

"The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy."

"Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more. God's Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which to learn."

"One source of perceived discouragement from which you may suffer is your belief that this takes time, and that the results of the Holy Spirit's teaching are far in the future. This is not so. For the Holy Spirit uses time in His Own way, and is not bound by it. Time is His friend in teaching. It does not waste Him, as it does you. And all the waste that time seems to bring with it is due but to your identification with the ego, which uses time to support its belief in destruction. The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the goal is death, which is its end. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end."

"The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. For it is as mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate. The ego wants you dead, but not itself. The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave. And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace even in death, it offers you immortality in hell. It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. How can the guilty hope for Heaven?"

"The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal. For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied."

"No one who follows the ego's teaching is without the fear of death. Yet if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? We have seen this strange paradox in the ego's thought system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself."

"The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who thinks its is the only voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell is here as well, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon with equanimity is the past. And even there, its only value is that it is no more."

"How bleak and despairing is the ego's use of time! And how terrifying! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace."

"To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must refuse to understand. That is the ego's interpretation of empathy, and is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way."

"When He relates through you, He does not relate through your ego to another ego. He does not join in pain, understanding that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it, and lighten it by sharing the delusion."

"The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies in the fact that it is applied only to certain types of problems and in certain people. These it selects out, and joins with. And it never joins except to strengthen itself. … Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always empathizes to weaken, and to weaken is always to attack."

"You do not know what empathizing means. Yet of this you may be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by and let the Holy Spirit relate through you, you will empathize with strength, and will gain in strength and not in weakness."

"Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anything you value to come of a relationship. You choose neither to hurt it nor to heal it in your own way. You do not know what healing is. All you have learned of empathy is from the past. And there is nothing from the past that you would share, for there is nothing from the past that you would keep. Do not use empathy to make the past real, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let healing be done for you. Keep but one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge any situation, and to determine your response by judging it."

"The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his "sins" are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but awakened."

"In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it. Fantasies change reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different."

"It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it and devoting it to "evil," it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask conflicting things of you."

"Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him Who knows the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. Salvation from separation would be complete, or will not be at all. Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it; not you."

"But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it."

"Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Son of God. You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself. And all His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him."

"This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth."

"The real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one and nothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free to see."

"To substitute is to accept instead. If you would but consider exactly what this entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has given you, and would accomplish for you. To substitute is to choose between, renouncing one aspect of the Sonship in favor of the other. For this special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution occurred is thus fragmented, and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation."

"You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see."

"Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not. That is the interference; that is what needs to be undone."

"Forgiveness removes only the untrue, lifting the shadows from the world and carrying it, safe and sure within its gentleness, to the bright world of new and clean perception. There is your purpose now. And it is there that peace awaits you."

"We said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth, peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the criterion by which the wholeness of the dedication can be safely assumed. Yet we also said that peace without faith will never be attained, for what is dedicated to truth as its only goal is brought to truth by faith. This faith encompasses everyone involved, for only thus the situation is perceived as meaningful and as a whole. And everyone must be involved in it, or else your faith is limited and your dedication incomplete."

"For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. A slain Christ has no meaning. But a risen Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God's forgiveness on himself; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole."

"Your chosen home is on the other side, beyond the veil. It has been carefully prepared for you, and it is ready to receive you now. You will not see it with the body's eyes. Yet all you need you have. Your home has called to you since time began, nor have you ever failed entirely to hear. You heard, but knew not how to look, nor where."

"There is no fear in love."

"Would you not have your holy brother lead you there? His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him where you laid the lilies of forgiveness. Let him be to you the savior from illusions, and look on him with the new vision that looks upon the lilies and brings you joy. We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is within us, as is our home. So will we find what we were meant to find by Him Who leads us."

"A simple question yet remains, and needs an answer. Do you like what you have made?—a world of murder and attack, through which you thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer before it overtakes you and you disappear."

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward."

"Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition."

"Take pity on yourself, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God hath joined have come together and need no longer look on sin apart."

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has Heaven's Holiness."

"Do you not see the opposite of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? Innocence is strength, and nothing else is strong."

"The sinless cannot fear, for sin of any kind is weakness. The show of strength attack would use to cover frailty conceals it not, for how can the unreal be hidden? No one is strong who has an enemy, and no one can attack unless he thinks he has. Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God. Being opposed to it, it is God's "enemy.""

"And God is feared as an opposing will. How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself!"

"He walks in peace who travels sinlessly along the way love shows him. For love walks with him there, protecting him from fear. And he will see only the sinless, who can not attack."

"This course is easy just because it makes no compromise. Yet it seems difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible."

"Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection?"

"Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make?"

"Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained."

"It is not necessary to tell Him what to do. He will not fail. Where He can enter, there He is already. And can it be He cannot enter where He wills to be? Peace will be yours because it is His Will."

"To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning."

"No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness."

"There is no substitute for peace. What God creates has no alternative. The truth arises from what He knows. And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation rose in His Mind because of what He knows."

"Love is extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love's purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back but one belief, one offering, and love is gone, because you asked a substitute to take its place. And now must war, the substitute for peace, come with the one alternative that you can choose for love. Your choosing it has given it all the reality it seems to have."

"The Christ in you is very still. He looks on what He loves, and knows it as Himself. And thus does He rejoice at what He sees, because He knows that it is one with Him and with His Father."

"The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet He is in you."

"No one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him everywhere."

"The miracle that you receive, you give. Each one becomes an illustration of the law on which salvation rests; that justice must be done to all, if anyone is to be healed. No one can lose, and everyone must benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and given equally. It is awareness that giving and receiving are the same."

"Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin, and keep the light where it has entered in. Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you."

"The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is no pain and no reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

"When you forgive the world your guilt, you will be free of it."

"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects."

"No change can be made in the present if its cause is past. Only the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now. Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught."

"There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His."

"For love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart."

"No one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. Certain it is he knows not what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful; hate is love."

"The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. The goal is clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. The speed by which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step. Each one will help a little, every time it is attempted. And together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. They are not new to you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. So now we need to practice them awhile, until they are the rules by which you live. We seek to make them habits now, so you will have them ready for whatever need."

"Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead."

"And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want."

"How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all."

"In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are. And as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You."

"A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful."

"I am never upset for the reason I think."

"There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind."

"Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything."

"These exercises are concerned with practice, not with understanding. You do not need to practice what you already understand. It would indeed be circular to aim at understanding, and assume that you have it already."

"You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

"Purpose is meaning."

"God is in that waste basket."

"I could see peace instead of this."

"There is a place in you where there is perfect peace."

"Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world."

"Let miracles replace all grievances."

"A mind and body cannot both exist."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say "God is," and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless."

"God is but Love, and therefore so am I."

"This is a manual for the teachers of God."

"The world of time is the world of illusion."

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with another. Such are the truly honest."

"Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain."

"Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized."

"Healing is always certain."

"Doubt is the result of conflicting wishes. Be sure of what you want, and doubt becomes impossible."

"Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time."

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

"Though it's a huge book, which I like to use as my magic eight ball of answers, ACIM has a simple message it gently teaches in a coaching, loving Voice, in the Voice of Christ: you have two choices when it comes to your freedom of choice—fear and love. That's it—that's what every "problem" in the world boils down to. And fear cannot exist since it is not a part of God, because anything outside of God is death. Then you simply have one choice—and that is love. Love is life and peace, and a mind at peace communicates with God. Communication with God is life, creativity, limitless power. Anything that makes you feel small, jealous, angry, guilty, vengeful springs from fear, products of the ego that just want to destroy you. That is the only temptation, to resist attack in all its many forms. Because when you attack, you're attacking yourself and cutting off communication with God. When people ask, how can there be a God when there's so much pain and suffering in the world, God didn't create that, we did. But the current darkness is falling away like eroded cliffs under the deluge of spiritual hunger. And this is one trend that will win out."

"One thing's for sure: if Mark Twain could have read A Course in Miracles, he never would have called the Book of Mormon "chloroform in print". … Utterly without redeeming value (take that any way you want), the only conceivable importance of A Course in Miracles is a testimony to the pathetic state of spiritual hunger and confusion on the part of late twentieth-century American "seekers."... To compare the patronizing pedantry of A Course in Miracles with any line or two from the New Testament gospels is like comparing a washing machine repair manual with Shakespeare."

"As far as the ego's plan is concerned, your seemingly multiple problems show up in this world in an attempt to get you to react—to feel bad, guilty, mad, defeated, bored, scared, inferior, self-conscious, annoyed, lonely, or superior and condescending. It's all some kind of a judgment, regardless of the form. As soon as you make that judgment, you give validity to the ego's world and reinforce the seeming reality of the separation and everything that goes with it."

"There are some channellings that are exceptional, where there is actually a higher consciousness at work. So, for example, A Course in Miracles is a book that was channeled through a medium. The medium, Helen Schucman, was a psychologist at Columbia University, and this voice came through her and spoke through her, and she was writing dictation, basically taking down dictation, every day in her office at Columbia University. She only told one colleague about it. She had to lock the door when she was doing it, because they would have thought she was insane. So she was taking down dictation. It started with, she heard this inner voice: "This is a course in miracles, please take notes." And she went to her colleague and said, "I hear this voice. I think I'm going insane." And her colleague said, "Just write down what the voice says, and then we'll decide whether you're insane or not.""

"It's easy to forgive people who have never done anything to make us angry. People who do make us angry, however, are our most important teachers. They indicate the limits to our capacity for forgiveness. "Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation." The decision to let go our grievances against other people is the decision to see ourselves as we truly are, because any darkness we let blind us to another's perfection also blinds us to our own. It can be very hard to let go of your perception of someone's guilt when you know that by every standard of ethics, morality, or integrity, you're right to find fault with them. But the Course asks, "Do you prefer that you be right or happy?""

"Examine the history of Christianity. Professing the salvation of humankind, Christianity has expanded through a tumultuous history of two thousand years, extending its influence throughout the world in the present era. Yet what has become of the Christian spirit that once cast flames of life so brilliant that, despite the most brutal persecution by the Roman empire, Roman citizens were brought to their knees before the crucified Jesus? Medieval feudal society buried Christianity alive. Even though the Reformation raised high the torch of new life, its flame could not turn back the sweeping tide of darkness. When ecclesiastic love waned, when waves of capitalistic greed surged across Christian Europe, when starving masses cried out bitterly in the slums, the promise of their salvation came not from heaven but from the earth. Its name was communism. Christianity, though it professed the love of God, had degenerated into a dead body of clergy trailing empty slogans. It was then only natural that a banner of rebellion would be raised, arguing that a merciless God who would allow such suffering could not exist. Hence, modern materialism was born. Western society became a hotbed of materialism; it was the fertile soil in which communism flourished. Christianity lost the ability to equal the successes of either communism or materialism and failed to present the truth that could conquer their theories. Christians watched helplessly as these ideologies budded and thrived in their midst and expanded their influence all over the world. What a pity this is! What is more, although Christian doctrine teaches that all humanity descended from the same parents, many citizens of Christian nations who profess this doctrine will not even sit together with their brothers and sisters of different skin colors. This illustrates the actual situation of today's Christianity, which has lost much of the power to put the words of Jesus into practice. It has become a house of lifeless rituals, a whitewashed tomb."

"Human beings are created to be the center of harmony of the whole cosmos. If Adam and Eve had attained perfection and united as husband and wife, it would have meant the joining into oneness of the two centers of the dual characteristics of all beings. Had Adam and Eve moved together in harmony and attained oneness, the whole cosmos with its dual characteristics would have danced in harmony. The place where Adam and Eve become perfectly one in heart and body as husband and wife is also the place where God, the subject partner giving love, and human beings, the object partners returning beauty, become united. This is the center of goodness where the purpose of creation is fulfilled. Here God, our Parent, draws near and abides within His perfected children and rests peacefully for eternity. This center of goodness is the object partner to God's eternal love, where God can be stimulated with joy for eternity. This is the place where the Word of God is incarnated and brought to fulfillment. It is the center of truth and the center of the original mind which guides us to pursue the purpose of creation."

"It is not God who decides whether a person's spirit enters heaven or hell upon his death; it is decided by the spirit itself. Humans are created so that once they reach perfection they will fully breathe the love of God. Those who committed sinful deeds while on earth become crippled spirits who are incapable of fully breathing in the love of God. They find it agonizing to stand before God, the center of true love. Of their own will, they choose to dwell in hell, far removed from the love of God."

"Had Jesus completed his mission as the Messiah on earth, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth would have been established in his day. The Kingdom of Heaven in heaven would also have been realized at that time, once people of perfect character living in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth had passed into the spirit world as divine spirits. However, because Jesus died on the cross, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth was not realized. The earth never saw the appearance of people who had reached the level of a divine spirit. No one has ever become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven in the spirit world, which was created as the home of divine spirits. Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven in heaven remains empty and incomplete."

"How can democracy accomplish its purpose? With the flow of history, humankind's spirituality has become enlightened due to the merit of the age in the providence of restoration. People's original minds respond to the providence and seek religion, often without their knowing why. Eventually, people will come to receive Christianity, which God is raising to be the highest religion. In this way, the world today is converging to form a single civilization based on Christian ideals. As history nears its consummation, the will of the people inclines toward Christian values. Democratic governments which abide by the will of the people also gradually become more Christian. Thus, when the Messiah returns to societies under the rule of democratic governments well-matured by the Christian spirit, he will be able to establish God's sovereignty upon the earth with the wholehearted support of the people. This will be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. We need to understand that democracy was born to undermine satanic monopolies of power for the purpose of God's final providence to restore, by the will of the people, a heavenly sovereignty under the leadership of the returning Christ."

"The universe, as we have seen, is patterned after the structure of a perfect human being. By the same token, the ideal world to be built by fully mature people is also to resemble the structure and functions of a perfect individual.10(cf. Creation 1.1; 1.2; 3.2) By analogy with the human body, whose organs function in accordance with the subtle commands of the brain, all the institutions of the ideal global society are to abide by the desires of God. Just as the commands of the brain are transmitted to every part of the body through the peripheral nervous system branching out from the spinal cord, in the ideal world God's guidance is conveyed to the entire society through Christ, who corresponds to the spinal cord, and God-loving leaders, who correspond to the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system branching out from the spinal cord corresponds to a nation's political parties. Thus, in the ideal world, people of God led by Christ will form organizations analogous to today's political parties... Therefore, Christ at the Second Advent will remedy the illness of the present political system that it may reflect God's design by restoring people's vertical relationship with God. This will unleash society's true potential."

"If we are to realize the ideal world of one global family which can honor Christ at the Second Advent as our True Parent, surely our languages must be unified. As expressed in the account of the building of the Tower of Babel, chaos was brought to our languages when we exalted the will of Satan. The principle of restoration through indemnity requires that we participate in the construction of God's tower and the glorification of God's Will as the way to unify all languages. Based upon which language will all languages be unified? The answer to this question is obvious. Children should learn the language of their parents. If Christ does indeed return to the land of Korea, then he will certainly use the Korean language, which will then become the mother tongue for all humanity."

"What, then, is fascism? Fascism denies the fundamental values of modern democracy, including respect for the individual and his basic rights, freedoms of speech, the press and association, and the parliamentary system. Race or nationality is the ultimate value, to be upheld by a strong nation-state. Individuals and institutions exist only for the benefit of the state. Under fascism, individuals cannot claim freedom as their inviolable right; they are to sacrifice their freedom in their duty to serve the state. The guiding political principle of fascism holds that all power and authority should be entrusted in one supreme leader rather than distributed among people. The personal will of the leader dictates the governing ideology for the entire nation. Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and the leaders of Japan's militaristic government were dictators of the fascist type."

"The economic structure of the ideal society also resembles the structure of a healthy human body. Production, distribution and consumption should have an organic, interdependent relationship such as that which exists between the digestive, circulatory and metabolic systems. There should not be destructive competition due to overproduction; nor should there be excessive accumulation or overconsumption due to unfair distribution, which would be contrary to the welfare of all people. There should be adequate production of necessary and useful goods, fair distribution to supply what is sufficient for people's needs, and reasonable consumption in harmony with the purpose of the whole."

"Third, by examining trends in the history of conflict, we can understand that human history is the history of the providence of restoration. Battles over property, territory and people have continued without interruption, expanding their scope in step with the progress of human society. The scale of these struggles has broadened from the family level to the levels of tribe, society, nation and world until today, when the democratic world and the communist world confront each other in a final conflict. In these Last Days of human history, heavenly law has descended upon the earth in the name of democracy, bringing an end to the long phase of history in which people sought to obtain happiness by seizing property, land and people. At the conclusion of World War I, the defeated nations gave up their colonies. At the end of World War II, the victors voluntarily liberated their colonies and provided them with material aid. In recent years, the great powers have invited weak and tiny nations, some smaller than one of their own cities, to become member states of the United Nations, giving them equal rights and status in the brotherhood of nations. What form does this final war between democracy and communism take? It is primarily a war of ideologies. Indeed, this war will never truly cease unless a truth emerges which can completely overthrow the ideology of Marxism-Leninism that is threatening the modern world. Communist ideology negates religion and promotes the exclusive supremacy of science. Hence, the new truth which can reconcile religion and science will emerge and prevail over the communist ideology. It will bring about the unification of the communist and democratic worlds. The trend of the history of conflict thus confirms that human history is the providential history to restore the original, ideal world."

"As an individual, each one of us is a product of the history of the providence of restoration. Hence, the person who is to accomplish the purpose of history is none other than I, myself. I must take up the cross of history and accept responsibility to fulfill its calling. To this end, I must fulfill in my lifetime (horizontally), through my efforts, the indemnity conditions which have accumulated through the long course of the providence of restoration (vertically). Only by doing this can I stand proudly as the fruit of history, the one whom God has eagerly sought throughout His providence. In other words, I must restore through indemnity, during my own generation, all the unaccomplished missions of past prophets and saints who were called in their time to carry the cross of restoration. Otherwise, I cannot become the individual who completes the purpose of the providence of restoration. To become such an historical victor, I must understand clearly the Heart of God when He worked with past prophets and saints, the original purpose for which God called them, and the details of the providential missions which He entrusted to them. Yet there is no one among fallen humanity who can become such an historical victor by his efforts alone. For this reason, we must understand all these things through Christ at the Second Advent, who comes to fulfill the providence of restoration. Moreover, when we believe in him, become one with him, and attend him in his work, we can stand in the position of having fulfilled horizontally with him the vertical indemnity conditions in the history of the providence of restoration. The path which all past saints walked as they strove to fulfill God's providential Will is the very path we must walk again today. Beyond that, we must continue on to the end of the path, even walking trails they left untrodden. Therefore, fallen people can never find the path that leads to life without understanding the particulars of the providence of restoration. Herein lies the reason why we must study the Principle of Restoration in detail."

"What, then, is the meaning of restoration through indemnity? When someone has lost his original position or state, he must make some condition to be restored to it. The making of such conditions of restitution is called indemnity. For example, to recover lost reputation, position or health, one must make the necessary effort or pay the due price. Suppose two people who once loved each other come to be on bad terms; they must make some condition of reconciliation before the love they previously enjoyed can be revived. In like manner, it is necessary for human beings who have fallen from God's grace into corruption to fulfill some condition before they can be restored to their true standing. We call this process of restoring the original position and state through making conditions restoration through indemnity, and we call the condition made a condition of indemnity. God's work to restore people to their true, unfallen state by having them fulfill indemnity conditions is called the providence of restoration through indemnity."

"With the fullness of time, God has sent one person to this earth to resolve the fundamental problems of human life and the universe. His name is Sun Myung Moon. For several decades he wandered through the spirit world so vast as to be beyond imagining. He trod a bloody path of suffering in search of the truth, passing through tribulations that God alone remembers. Since he understood that no one can find the ultimate truth to save humanity without first passing through the bitterest of trials, he fought alone against millions of devils, both in the spiritual and physical worlds, and triumphed over them all. Through intimate spiritual communion with God and by meeting with Jesus and many saints in Paradise, he brought to light all the secrets of Heaven."

"To restart the process toward perfection, God has sent messiahs to earth who could restore the true state of humanity's relationship with God. Before that can happen, however, humans must perform good deeds that cancel the bad effects of sin. Unificationists call this "indemnity". Showing love and devotion to one's fellow humans, especially within families, helps pay this indemnity."

"When I came in the door to Little Angels in the morning, I was greeted with the most amazing feeling of grace and love from God. I don't know if I can really explain it, but it centers on the subtle difference between "I have to pay indemnity" because of guilt and fear and "I have to pay indemnity" because … someone has to do it. Because it has to get done, or the world will not progress toward the ideal. God is taking every opportunity to claim indemnity offerings and Father is doing his best to tell us how to make them (by completing the projects at hand, by prayer, by loving the people around us, etc.). And then, when we don't do as much as we might or should have been able to do, God and Father take the opportunity to take a tragic event like the death of Young Jin Nim and use it to make our back payment for us without accusation or condemnation."

"In our Unification Church faith the most beautiful word is indemnity; through indemnity we can pay the debt of sin. You can think that no one else could stand such a burden of indemnity, so God is asking you to pay instead as His champion. You can accept it with a thankful heart. When you compare the time you spend without the person you loved with the millions of years your generations will live, your payment of indemnity is small in comparison to the blessing God will give you and your descendants."

"The movement's official doctrinal statement, and a part of the revelation, is the Divine Principle. Both an oral tradition and a written one and published in several versions, Divine Principle is the Completed Testament. The Rev. Moon claims to have come not to destroy or abrogate the Old and New Testaments, but to fulfill them-to "complete" them. To his Moonist followers, the Rev. Moon is primarily "true father," probably the Messiah, and only secondarily a theologian. In an effort to systematize Moon's teachings, several members of the Unification Church in Korea have put together a developing theological system in Divine Principle which is impressive in its imaginative nature, coherence, and consistency, if not in its Christian orthodoxy. As the most complete expression of Moonist teachings to date, Divine Principle is the basic text of the Unification Church. The two major divisions of the system are the doctrines of Creation and Restoration. There are many subsets to these major divisions, but Creation and Restoration are the foci for the Moonist theological system."

"The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi"

"Which is to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that is the , the , manifesting himself unto all nations—And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ."

"And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands."

"I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandment unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them."

"And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters."

"Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy."

"Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself."

"For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile."

"Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews? Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth? Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also. And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that I speak forth my words according to mine own pleasure. And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever. Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written."

"And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the earth, hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good."

"Wherefore, we would to God that we could persuade all men not to rebel against God, to provoke him to anger, but that all men would believe in Christ, and view his death, and suffer his cross and bear the shame of the world; wherefore, I, Jacob, take it upon me to fulfil the commandment of my brother Nephi."

"And now, my brethren, I have spoken unto you concerning pride; and those of you which have afflicted your neighbor, and persecuted him because ye were proud in your hearts, of the things which God hath given you, what say ye of it? Do ye not suppose that such things are abominable unto him who created all flesh? And the one being is as precious in his sight as the other. And all flesh is of the dust; and for the selfsame end hath he created them, that they should keep his acommandments and glorify him forever. And now I make an end of speaking unto you concerning this pride. And were it not that I must speak unto you concerning a grosser crime, my heart would rejoice exceedingly because of you."

"For behold, thus saith the Lord, I will liken thee, O house of Israel, like unto a tame olive-tree, which a man took and nourished in his vineyard; and it grew, and waxed old, and began to decay."

"And I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins. Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart. And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens. And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed. And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away. And I said: Lord, how is it done? And he said unto me: Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen. And many years pass away before he shall manifest himself in the flesh; wherefore, go to, thy faith hath made thee whole."

"And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed. And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away."

"And it came to pass that the prophets of the Lord did threaten the people of Nephi, according to the word of God, that if they did not keep the commandments, but should fall into transgression, they should be destroyed from off the face of the land. Wherefore, the prophets, and the priests, and the teachers, did labor diligently, exhorting with all long-suffering the people to diligence; teaching the law of Moses, and the intent for which it was given; persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah, and believe in him to come as though he already was. And after this manner did they teach them. And it came to pass that by so doing they kept them from being destroyed upon the face of the land; for they did prick their hearts with the word, continually stirring them up unto repentance. And it came to pass that two hundred and thirty and eight years had passed away—after the manner of wars, and contentions, and dissensions, for the space of much of the time."

"And behold, the record of this people is engraven upon plates which is had by the kings, according to the generations; and I know of no revelation save that which has been written, neither prophecy; wherefore, that which is sufficient is written. And I make an end."

"Behold, I am Amaleki, the son of Abinadom. Behold, I will speak unto you somewhat concerning Mosiah, who was made king over the land of Zarahemla; for behold, he being warned of the Lord that he should flee out of the land of Nephi, and as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord should also depart out of the land with him, into the wilderness— And it came to pass that he did according as the Lord had commanded him. And they departed out of the land into the wilderness, as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord; and they were led by many preachings and prophesyings. And they were admonished continually by the word of God; and they were led by the power of his arm, through the wilderness until they came down into the land which is called the land of Zarahemla. And they discovered a people, who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there was great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla; and also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly, because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass which contained the record of the Jews. Behold, it came to pass that Mosiah discovered that the people of Zarahemla came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon."

"And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And it is many hundred years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son; and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. But may God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps some day it may profit them. And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi."

"And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."

"And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters."

"And according to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart. Behold I say unto you that this is all true. And behold, he preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved."

"And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive. And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works."

"Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance."

"And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true."

"By small and simple things are great things brought to pass"

"And remember also the words which Amulek spake unto Zeezrom, in the city of Ammonihah; for he said unto him that the Lord surely should come to redeem his people, but that he should not come to redeem them in their sins, but to redeem them from their sins."

"Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world. And behold, I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning. And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words the whole multitude fell to the earth; for they remembered that it had been prophesied among them that Christ should show himself unto them after his ascension into heaven."

"And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and become as a little child, and be baptized in my name, or ye can in nowise receive these things. And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and be baptized in my name, and become as a little child, or ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God."

"And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another."

"And now I, Mormon, make a record of the things which I have both seen and heard, and call it the Book of Mormon."

"O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you! Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss. O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen! But behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return."

"Therefore repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus, and lay hold upon the gospel of Christ, which shall be set before you, not only in this record but also in the record which shall come unto the Gentiles from the Jews, which record shall come from the Gentiles unto you. For behold, this is written for the intent that ye may believe that; and if ye believe that ye will believe this also; and if ye believe this ye will know concerning your fathers, and also the marvelous works which were wrought by the power of God among them. And ye will also know that ye are a remnant of the seed of Jacob; therefore ye are numbered among the people of the first covenant; and if it so be that ye believe in Christ, and are baptized, first with water, then with fire and with the Holy Ghost, following the example of our Savior, according to that which he hath commanded us, it shall be well with you in the day of judgment. Amen."

"Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing."

"And behold, these things which we have desired concerning our brethren, yea, even their restoration to the knowledge of Christ, are according to the prayers of all the saints who have dwelt in the land."

"And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire."

"And then shall my revelations which I have caused to be written by my servant John be unfolded in the eyes of all the people. Remember, when ye see these things, ye shall know that the time is at hand that they shall be made manifest in very deed."

"Now I, Moroni, write somewhat as seemeth me good; and I write unto my brethren, the Lamanites; and I would that they should know that more than four hundred and twenty years have passed away since the sign was given of the coming of Christ."

"Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

"And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen."

"I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."

"We are sometimes told that we are not a biblical church. We are a biblical church. This wonderful testament of the Old World, this great and good Holy Bible is one of our standard works. We teach from it. We bear testimony of it. We read from it. It strengthens our testimony. And we add to that this great second witness, the Book of Mormon, the testament of the New World, for as the Bible says, "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall [all things] be established" (2 Cor. 13:1).”"

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason."

"No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so."

"If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."

"Now, I did not sail with the brother of Jared in crossing an ocean, settling in a new world. I did not hear King Benjamin speak his angelically delivered sermon. I did not proselyte with Alma and Amulek nor witness the fiery death of innocent believers. I was not among the Nephite crowd who touched the wounds of the resurrected Lord, nor did I weep with Mormon and Moroni over the destruction of an entire civilization. But my testimony of this record and the peace it brings to the human heart is as binding and unequivocal as was theirs."

"And so, I counsel you, my beloved brothers and sisters and friends everywhere, to make reading the Book of Mormon a few minutes each day a lifelong practice. All of us need the uninterrupted association with the Spirit of the Lord. We need to take the Holy Spirit for our constant guide that we be not deceived. I am persuaded by my own experience and that of my loved ones, as well as by the statements of the Prophet Joseph Smith, that one can get and keep closer to the Lord by reading the Book of Mormon than by reading any other book. Don’t be content with what someone else tells you about what is in it. Drink deeply from the divine fountain itself."

"Love for the Book of Mormon expands one’s love for the Bible and vice versa. Scriptures of the Restoration do not compete with the Bible; they complement the Bible. We are indebted to martyrs who gave their lives so that we could have the Bible. It establishes the everlasting nature of the gospel and of the plan of happiness. The Book of Mormon restores and underscores biblical doctrines such as tithing, the temple, the Sabbath day, and the priesthood."

"True or not, the Book of Mormon is a powerful epic written on a grand scale with a host of characters, a narrative of human struggle and conflict, of divine intervention, heroic good and atrocious evil, of prophecy, morality, and law. … The Book of Mormon should rank among the great achievements of American literature, but it has never been accorded the status it deserves, since Mormons deny Joseph Smith's authorship, and non-Mormons, dismissing the work as a fraud, have been more likely to ridicule than read it."

"Joseph Smith Jr. was one among many American religious 'seekers' who felt emboldened by his knowledge of Bible stories, despite a lack of formal training or literary skills, to take sacred history into his own hands. One might see the Book of Mormon, then, as an ingenious exercise in making new meaning in a new landscape, in reshaping the world by placing oneself, and one's family and friends, in a world charged with sacred meaning and divine inspiration"

"The wicked ... worship stones and brute beasts instead of God, revering very many things, one here another there, which have no reason, or mind or hearing."

"From their own labors and wicked notions men have accepted gods of wood and stone. They have made them of bronze and gold and silver, vain lifeless, dumb, and smelted in fire, vainly putting their trust in such as these."

"There was once among men a shining light of the sun when the harmonious ray of the prophets was being spread abroad, a tongue dripping a beautiful drink for all mortals with honeyed sweetness; it made manifest, offered and effected gentle things for all."

"The imperishable God who dwells in the sky in anger will case a lightning bolt from heaven against the power of the impious."

"O MEN, why do ye vainly think on things Too lofty, as if ye immortal were?"

"ੴ ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਅਜੂਨੀ ਸੈਭੰ ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥ ॥ ਜਪੁ ॥ ਆਦਿ ਸਚੁ ਜੁਗਾਦਿ ਸਚੁ ॥ ਹੈ ਭੀ ਸਚੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਹੋਸੀ ਭੀ ਸਚੁ ॥੧॥ ਸੋਚੈ ਸੋਚਿ ਨ ਹੋਵਈ ਜੇ ਸੋਚੀ ਲਖ ਵਾਰ ॥ ਚੁਪੈ ਚੁਪ ਨ ਹੋਵਈ ਜੇ ਲਾਇ ਰਹਾ ਲਿਵ ਤਾਰ ॥ ਭੁਖਿਆ ਭੁਖ ਨ ਉਤਰੀ ਜੇ ਬੰਨਾ ਪੁਰੀਆ ਭਾਰ ॥ ਸਹਸ ਸਿਆਣਪਾ ਲਖ ਹੋਹਿ ਤ ਇਕ ਨ ਚਲੈ ਨਾਲਿ ॥ ਕਿਵ ਸਚਿਆਰਾ ਹੋਈਐ ਕਿਵ ਕੂੜੈ ਤੁਟੈ ਪਾਲਿ ॥ ਹੁਕਮਿ ਰਜਾਈ ਚਲਣਾ ਨਾਨਕ ਲਿਖਿਆ ਨਾਲਿ ॥੧॥"

"No one knows the state of the Lord. The Yogis, the celibates, the austere penitents, and all sorts of clever people have failed. Pause. In an instant, He changes the beggar into a king, and the king into a beggar. He fills what is empty, and empties what is full. Such are His ways. He Himself spread out the expanse of His Maya, and He Himself beholds it. He assumes so many forms, and plays so many games, and yet He remains distinct and detached from it all. Incalculable, infinite, incomprehensible and immaculate, He has misled the whole world. So give up all your doubts; prays Nanak, O mortal, focus your consciousness on His Feet."

"I am a sacrifice to the True Name. Your rule shall never end. Your rule is eternal and unchanging; it shall never come to an end. He alone becomes Your servant, who contemplates You in peaceful ease. Enemies and pain shall never touch him, and sin shall never come close to him. I am forever a sacrifice to the One Lord, and Your Name"

"When the Giver of peace grants His Grace, the mortal being meditates on the Lord, the Life of the Universe."

"“Raam Chand passed away, as did Raavan, even though he had lots of relatives. Says Nanak, nothing lasts forever; the world is like a dream.”"

"“O Nanak, the Lord is fearless and formless; myriads of others, like Rama, are mere dust before Him.”"

"“Kabeer, it does make a difference, how you chant the Lord’s Name, ‘Raam’. This is something to consider. Everyone uses the same word for the son of Dasrath and the Wondrous Lord. Kabeer, use the word ‘Raam’, only to speak of the All-pervading Lord. You must make that distinction. One ‘Raam’ is pervading everywhere, while the other is contained only in himself.”"

"ਸਾਚੇ ਤੇ ਪਵਨਾ ਭਇਆ ਪਵਨੈ ਤੇ ਜਲੁ ਹੋਇ ॥ ਜਲ ਤੇ ਤ੍ਰਿਭਵਣੁ ਸਾਜਿਆ ਘਟਿ ਘਟਿ ਜੋਤਿ ਸਮੋਇ ॥"

"ਪਹਿਲਾ ਪਾਣੀ ਜੀਉ ਹੈ ਜਿਤੁ ਹਰਿਆ ਸਭੁ ਕੋਇ ॥"

"ਪਾਤਾਲਾ ਪਾਤਾਲ ਲਖ ਆਗਾਸਾ ਆਗਾਸ ॥ ਓੜਕ ਓੜਕ ਭਾਲਿ ਥਕੇ ਵੇਦ ਕਹਨਿ ਇਕ ਵਾਤ ॥ ਸਹਸ ਅਠਾਰਹ ਕਹਨਿ ਕਤੇਬਾ ਅਸੁਲੂ ਇਕੁ ਧਾਤੁ ॥ ਲੇਖਾ ਹੋਇ ਤ ਲਿਖੀਐ ਲੇਖੈ ਹੋਇ ਵਿਣਾਸੁ ॥"

"ਖੰਡ ਪਤਾਲ ਅਸੰਖ ਮੈ ਗਣਤ ਨ ਹੋਈ ॥"

"ਕਵਣੁ ਸੁ ਵੇਲਾ ਵਖਤੁ ਕਵਣੁ ਕਵਣ ਥਿਤਿ ਕਵਣੁ ਵਾਰੁ ॥ ਕਵਣਿ ਸਿ ਰੁਤੀ ਮਾਹੁ ਕਵਣੁ ਜਿਤੁ ਹੋਆ ਆਕਾਰੁ ॥ ਵੇਲ ਨ ਪਾਈਆ ਪੰਡਤੀ ਜਿ ਹੋਵੈ ਲੇਖੁ ਪੁਰਾਣੁ ॥ ਵਖਤੁ ਨ ਪਾਇਓ ਕਾਦੀਆ ਜਿ ਲਿਖਨਿ ਲੇਖੁ ਕੁਰਾਣੁ ॥ ਥਿਤਿ ਵਾਰੁ ਨਾ ਜੋਗੀ ਜਾਣੈ ਰੁਤਿ ਮਾਹੁ ਨਾ ਕੋਈ ॥ ਜਾ ਕਰਤਾ ਸਿਰਠੀ ਕਉ ਸਾਜੇ ਆਪੇ ਜਾਣੈ ਸੋਈ ॥"

"ਭੈ ਵਿਚਿ ਸੂਰਜੁ ਭੈ ਵਿਚਿ ਚੰਦੁ ॥ ਕੋਹ ਕਰੋੜੀ ਚਲਤ ਨ ਅੰਤੁ ॥"

"ਅਰਬਦ ਨਰਬਦ ਧੁੰਧੂਕਾਰਾ ॥ ਧਰਣਿ ਨ ਗਗਨਾ ਹੁਕਮੁ ਅਪਾਰਾ ॥ ਨਾ ਦਿਨੁ ਰੈਨਿ ਨ ਚੰਦੁ ਨ ਸੂਰਜੁ ਸੁੰਨ ਸਮਾਧਿ ਲਗਾਇਦਾ ॥੧॥ ..."

"ਕੀਤਾ ਪਸਾਉ ਏਕੋ ਕਵਾਉ ॥ ਤਿਸ ਤੇ ਹੋਏ ਲਖ ਦਰੀਆਉ ॥"

"ਮਾ ਕੀ ਰਕਤੁ ਪਿਤਾ ਬਿਦੁ ਧਾਰਾ ॥ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਸੂਰਤਿ ਕਰਿ ਆਪਾਰਾ ॥ ਜੋਤਿ ਦਾਤਿ ਜੇਤੀ ਸਭ ਤੇਰੀ ਤੂ ਕਰਤਾ ਸਭ ਠਾਈ ਹੇ ॥੪॥"

"ਦੇਹੀ ਮਾਟੀ ਬੋਲੈ ਪਉਣੁ ॥ ਬੁਝੁ ਰੇ ਗਿਆਨੀ ਮੂਆ ਹੈ ਕਉਣੁ ॥"

"ਪਵਨੈ ਮਹਿ ਪਵਨੁ ਸਮਾਇਆ ॥ ਜੋਤੀ ਮਹਿ ਜੋਤਿ ਰਲਿ ਜਾਇਆ ॥ ਮਾਟੀ ਮਾਟੀ ਹੋਈ ਏਕ ॥ ਰੋਵਨਹਾਰੇ ਕੀ ਕਵਨ ਟੇਕ ॥੧॥ ਕਉਨੁ ਮੂਆ ਰੇ ਕਉਨੁ ਮੂਆ ॥ ..."

"ਕਹੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਗੁਰਿ ਬ੍ਰਹਮੁ ਦਿਖਾਇਆ ॥ ਮਰਤਾ ਜਾਤਾ ਨਦਰਿ ਨ ਆਇਆ ॥੪॥੪॥"

"ਨਾ ਕੋਈ ਮਰੈ ਨ ਆਵੈ ਜਾਇਆ ॥੪॥੧੦॥"

"ਧਰਤੀ ਦੇਗ ਮਿਲੈ ਇਕ ਵੇਰਾ ਭਾਗੁ ਤੇਰਾ ਭੰਡਾਰੀ ॥੨॥ ਨਾ ਸਾਬੂਰੁ ਹੋਵੈ ਫਿਰਿ ਮੰਗੈ ਨਾਰਦੁ ਕਰੇ ਖੁਆਰੀ ॥"

"ਨਾਨਕ ਸਚ ਦਾਤਾਰੁ ਸਿਨਾਖਤੁ ਕੁਦਰਤੀ ॥੮॥"

"ਪਾਣੀ ਪ੍ਰਾਣ ਪਵਣਿ ਬੰਧਿ ਰਾਖੇ ਚੰਦੁ ਸੂਰਜੁ ਮੁਖਿ ਦੀਏ ॥ ਮਰਣ ਜੀਵਣ ਕਉ ਧਰਤੀ ਦੀਨੀ ਏਤੇ ਗੁਣ ਵਿਸਰੇ ॥੨॥"

"ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਭਏ ਕੀਟ ਪਤੰਗਾ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਗਜ ਮੀਨ ਕੁਰੰਗਾ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਗਜ ਮੀਨ ਕੁਰੰਗਾ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਪੰਖੀ ਸਰਪ ਹੋਇਓ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਹੈਵਰ ਬ੍ਰਿਖ ਜੋਇਓ ॥੧|| ਮਿਲੁ ਜਗਦੀਸ ਮਿਲਨ ਕੀ ਬਰੀਆ ॥ ਚਿਰੰਕਾਲ ਇਹ ਦੇਹ ਸੰਜਰੀਆ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਸੈਲ ਗਿਰਿ ਕਰਿਆ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਗਰਭ ਹਿਰਿ ਖਰਿਆ ॥ ਕਈ ਜਨਮ ਸਾਖ ਕਰਿ ਉਪਾਇਆ ॥ ਲਖ ਚਉਰਾਸੀਹ ਜੋਨਿ ਭ੍ਰਮਾਇਆ ॥੨॥"

"ਕੀਮਤਿ ਕਿਨੈ ਨ ਪਾਈਆ ਕਹਣਿ ਨ ਵਡਾ ਹੋਇ ॥ ਸਾਚਾ ਸਾਹਬੁ ਏਕੁ ਤੂ ਹੋਰਿ ਜੀਆ ਕੇਤੇ ਲੋਅ ॥੩॥"

"ਜਲਿ ਥਲਿ ਜੀਆ ਪੁਰੀਆ ਲੋਆ ਆਕਾਰਾ ਆਕਾਰ ॥ ਓਇ ਜਿ ਆਖਹਿ ਸੁ ਤੂੰਹੈ ਜਾਣਹਿ ਤਿਨਾ ਭਿ ਤੇਰੀ ਸਾਰ ॥"

"ਬੇਦ ਕਤੇਬ ਸਿਮ੍ਰਿਤਿ ਸਭਿ ਸਾਸਤ ਇਨ੍ਹ੍ਹ ਪੜਿਆ ਮੁਕਤਿ ਨ ਹੋਈ ॥"

"ਬੇਦ ਕਤੇਬ ਸੰਸਾਰ ਹਭਾ ਹੂੰ ਬਾਹਰਾ ॥"

"ਬੇਦ ਕਤੇਬ ਇਫਤਰਾ ਭਾਈ ਦਿਲ ਕਾ ਫਿਕਰੁ ਨ ਜਾਇ ॥"

"ਸਿਮ੍ਰਿਤਿ ਸਾਸਤ੍ਰ ਪੁੰਨ ਪਾਪ ਬੀਚਾਰਦੇ ਤਤੈ ਸਾਰ ਨ ਜਾਣੀ ॥"

"ਸਾਸਤੁ ਬੇਦੁ ਬਕੈ ਖੜੋ ਭਾਈ ਕਰਮ ਕਰਹੁ ਸੰਸਾਰੀ ॥ ਪਾਖੰਡਿ ਮੈਲੁ ਨ ਚੂਕਈ ਭਾਈ ਅੰਤਰਿ ਮੈਲੁ ਵਿਕਾਰੀ ॥"

"ਬੇਦ ਬਾਣੀ ਜਗੁ ਵਰਤਦਾ ਤ੍ਰੈ ਗੁਣ ਕਰੇ ਬੀਚਾਰੁ ॥ ਬਿਨੁ ਨਾਵੈ ਜਮ ਡੰਡੁ ਸਹੈ ਮਰਿ ਜਨਮੈ ਵਾਰੋ ਵਾਰ ॥ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਭੇਟੇ ਮੁਕਤਿ ਹੋਇ ਪਾਏ ਮੋਖ ਦੁਆਰੁ ॥੧॥"

"ਪੜਿ ਪੜਿ ਪੰਡਿਤ ਮੋਨੀ ਥਕੇ ਬੇਦਾਂ ਕਾ ਅਭਿਆਸੁ ॥ ਹਰਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਚਿਤਿ ਨ ਆਵਈ ਨਹ ਨਿਜ ਘਰਿ ਹੋਵੈ ਵਾਸੁ ॥ ਜਮਕਾਲੁ ਸਿਰਹੁ ਨ ਉਤਰੈ ਅੰਤਰਿ ਕਪਟ ਵਿਣਾਸੁ ॥੭॥"

"You have engulfed Hindustan in dread... Oh Lord, these dogs have destroyed this diamond-like Hindustan, (so great is their terror that) no one asks after those who have been killed, and yet You do not pay heed."

"God will not ask a man of what race he is,—he will ask what he has done."

"Let thy coat of mail be reason, and convert thy enemies to friends. All founders of sects are mortal. God alone endures forever. Men may read Vedas and Korans, but only in him is salvation."

"Shri Guru Granth Sahib is a source book, an expression of man's loneliness, his aspiration, his longings, his cry to God and his hunger for communication with that being. I have studied the scriptures of other great religions, but I do not find elsewhere the same power of appeal to the heart and mind as I feel here in these volumes. They are compact in spite of their length, and are a revelation of the vast reach of the human heart varying from the most noble concept of God to the recognition and indeed the insistence upon the practical needs of the human body. There is something strangely modern about these scriptures and this puzzled me until I learnt that they are in fact comparatively modern, compiled as late as the sixteenth century, when explorers were beginning to discover the globe upon which we all live as a single entity divided only by arbitrary lines of our own making. Perhaps this sense of unity is a source of power I find in these volumes. They speak to persons of any religion or of none. They speak for the human heart and the searching mind..."

"There is not a single line in the Adi Granth which sounds discordant with the spirituality of Hinduism.... Hindus in the Punjab regard the Adi Granth as the sixth Veda, in direct succession to the Rik, the Sama, the Yajus, the Atharva and the Mahabharata."

"Sikh scholars sat down to take Hinduism out of the Granth Sahib. They took it out page by page. In the end, however, they were left holding the binding cover in their hands."

"The holy Granth (SGGS) is the only inter-communal book in India, if not in the world."

"Re and Thoth, take me with you, that I may eat of what you eat, that I may drink of what you drink, that I may live on what you live on, that I may sit on what you sit on, that I may be strong through that whereby you are strong, that I may sail in that in which you sail."

"Thou purifiest thyself in the dew of the stars."

"The messengers of thy Ka are come for thee; the messengers of thy father are come for thee; the messengers of Rē are come for thee. Go after thy sun; purify thyself, thy bones are female-falcons, goddesses, who are in heaven, that thou mayest be at the side of the god."

"Atum, bring me up to you, encircle me inside your arms. There is no star-god without his companion: I am your companion."

"Who surpasses thee, who is more like thee, who is more weary than thou, who is greater than thou, who is fresher than thou, who is more praised than thou. Thy time of silence about it is no more."

"The two doors of the horizon are open; its bolts slide. He has come to thee … Great One; he has come to thee, Great-in-magic … He is pure for thee; he is in awe of thee. Mayest thou be satisfied with him; mayest thou be satisfied with his purity; mayest thou be satisfied with his word, which he speaks to thee: "How beautiful is thy face, when it is peaceful, new, young, for a god, father of the gods, has begotten thee!" He has come to thee, Great-in-magic … It is Horus, who has fought in protection of his eye, Great-in-magic."

"Opened are the double doors of the horizon; unlocked are its bolts."

"Clouds darken the sky, The stars rain down, The Bows [a constellation] stagger, The bones of the hell-hounds tremble, The porters are silent, When they see king Unis, Dawning as a soul, As a god living on his fathers, Feeding on his mothers."

"The hidden ones worship you, The great ones surround you, The watchers wait on you, Barley is threshed for you, Emmer is reaped for you, Your monthly feasts are made with it, Your half-month feasts are made with it, As ordered done for you by Geb, your father, Rise up, O Teti, you shall not die!"

"Stand at the gates that bar the common people! The gatekeeper comes out to you, He grasps your hand, Takes you into heaven, to your father Geb. He rejoices at your coming, Gives you his hands, Kisses you, caresses you, Sets before you the spirits, the imperishable stars."

"He flies who flies; this king Pepi flies away from you, ye mortals. He is not of the earth, he is of the sky …This king Pepi flies as a cloud to the sky, like a masthead bird; this king Pepi kisses the sky like a falcon."

"Thou art the Great One in Abydos, thou art the Morning Star which appears in the eastern part of heaven, to which Horus of the Tuat has given his body. O great and exalted one among the imperishable stars, thou shalt never perish."

"Great is truth, and mighty above all things."

"Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory."

"If he went not through the narrow, how could he come into the broad?"

"I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out."

"So they went forth both, and the young man's dog with them."

"And became lord of his cities, and came unto Ecbatane, and took the towers, and spoiled the streets thereof, and turned the beauty thereof into shame."

"Behold, a noise of a tumult with thunder, and earthquakes, and uproar in the land. And behold, two great dragons came forth ready to fight, and their cry was great."

"Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth."

"The ear of jealousy heareth all things."

"The ungodly ... reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, ... "We were born by mere chance, ... come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things. ... Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they wither.""

"Through envy of the devil came death into the world."

"Better it is to die than to beg."

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us."

"To the Lord our God appertaineth righteousness, but unto us and to our fathers open shame, as appeareth this day."

"For we, O Lord, are become less than any nation, and be kept under this day in all the world, because of our sins."

"But the Angel of the Lord came down into the oven, together with Azarias and his fellows, and smote the flame of the fire out of the oven: And made the midst of the furnace, as it had been a moist whistling wind, so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them."

"Eleazar, one of the scribes in high position, a man now advanced in age and of noble presence, was being forced to open his mouth to eat swine's flesh. But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with pollution, went up to the rack of his own accord, spitting out the flesh, as men ought to go who have the courage to refuse things that it is not right to taste, even for the natural love of life. Those who were in charge of that unlawful sacrifice took the man aside, because of their long acquaintance with him, and privately urged him to bring meat of his own providing, proper for him to use, and pretend that he was eating the flesh of the sacrificial meal which had been commanded by the king, so that by doing this he might be saved from death, and be treated kindly on account of his old friendship with them. But making a high resolve, worthy of his years and the dignity of his old age and the gray hairs which he had reached with distinction and his excellent life even from childhood, and moreover according to the holy God-given law, he declared himself quickly, telling them to send him to Hades. "Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life," he said, "lest many of the young should suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year has gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age. For even if for the present I should avoid the punishment of men, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws." When he had said this, he went at once to the rack. And those who a little before had acted toward him with good will now changed to ill will, because the words he had uttered were in their opinion sheer madness. When he was about to die under the blows, he groaned aloud and said: "It is clear to the Lord in His holy knowledge that, though I might have been saved from death, I am enduring terrible sufferings in my body under this beating, but in my soul I am glad to suffer these things because I fear him." So in this way he died, leaving in his death an example of nobility and a memorial of courage, not only to the young but to the great body of his nation."

"When he was at the last gasp."

"Nicanor lay dead in his harness."

"Hail to you, gods! I know you, I know your names. I shall not fall in fear of you, You shall not accuse me of crime to this god whom you follow! No misfortune shall befall me on your account! You shall speak rightly about me before the All-Lord, For I have acted rightly in Egypt. I have not cursed a god, I have not been faulted. [...] Behold me, I have come to you, Without sin, without guilt, without evil, Without a witness against me, Without one whom I have wronged. I live on maat, I feed on maat, I have done what people speak of, What the gods are pleased with, I have contented a god with what he wishes. I have given bread to the hungry, Water to the thirsty, Clothes to the naked, A ferryboat to the boatless. I have given divine offerings to the gods, Invocation-offerings to the dead. Rescue me, protect me, Do not accuse me before the great god!I am one pure of mouth, pure of hands, One to whom "welcome" is said by those who see him."

"Homage to thee, O thou who hast come as Khepera, Khepera the creator of the gods, Thou art seated on thy throne, thou risest up in the sky, illumining thy mother Nut], thou art seated on thy throne as the king of the gods."

"Let there be prepared for me a seat in the Boat of the Sun on the day whereon the god saileth."

"Homage to thee, O Bull of Amentet, Thoth the king of eternity is with me. I am the great god by the side of the divine boat, I have fought for thee, I am one of those gods, those divine chiefs, who proved the truth-speaking of Osiris before his enemies on the day of the weighing of words. I am thy kinsman Osiris."

"The heart of Osiris hath in very truth been weighed, and his Heart-soul hath borne testimony on his behalf; his heart hath been found right by the trial in the Great Balance. There hath not been found any wickedness in him; he hath not wasted the offerings which have been made in the temples; he hath not committed any evil act; and he hath not set his mouth in motion with words of evil whilst he was upon earth."

"I have not spoken that which is not true knowingly, nor have I done anything with a false heart. Grant thou that I may be like unto those favoured ones who are in thy following, and that I may be an Osiris greatly favoured of the beautiful god, and beloved of the Lord of the Two Lands, I who am a veritable royal scribe who loveth thee, Ani, whose word is true before the god Osiris."

"I am Ra, who stablisheth those who praise him. I am the Knot of the god in the Aser tree, the twice beautiful one, who is more splendid to-day than yesterday. I am Ra, who stablisheth those who praise him. I am the Knot of the god within the Aser tree, and my appearance is the appearance [of Ra] on this day.My hair is the hair of Nu. My face is the face of the Disk. My eyes are the eyes of Hathor. My ears are the ears of Up-uat."

"I am he who protecteth you for millions of years. Whether ye be denizens of heaven, or of the earth, or of the South, or of the North, or of the East, or of the West, the fear of me is in your bodies. I am he whose being hath been wrought in his eye. I shall not die again. My moment is in your bodies, but my forms are in my place of habitation. I am "He who cannot be known." The Red Fiends have their faces directed against me. I am the unveiled one. The period when the heavens were created for me and were enlarged the bounds of earth, and multiplied the progeny thereof, cannot be found out. They shall fail and not be united again. By reason of the speech which I address to you, my name setteth itself apart from all things evil which are in the mouths of men. I am he who riseth and shineth, a wall which cometh out of a wall, an only One who proceedeth from an only One. There is never a day that passeth without the things which appertain unto him being therein; passing, passing, passing, passing. Verily I say unto thee, I am the Plant which cometh forth from Nu, and my mother is Nut. Hail, my creator, I am he who hath no power to walk, the Great Knot who dwelleth in Yesterday. The might of my strength is within my hand, I am not known [by thee], but I am he who knoweth thee. I cannot be held in the hand, but I am he who can hold thee in his hand. Hail, O Egg! Hail, O Egg! I am Horus who liveth for millions of years, whose flame shineth upon you, and bringeth your hearts unto me. I am master of my throne. I advance at this season. I have opened a path. I have delivered myself from all evil things."

"Hail, my Lord, who dost hasten through eternity, whose existence is for ever, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Sovereign, King of the gods, who live in their shrine."

"The Eye of Horus protecteth thee, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti, and it keepeth thee in safety; it casteth down headlong all thine enemies for thee, and all thine enemies have fallen down headlong before thee."

"Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle....While they live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as each one's lot was cast, and follow the local customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. They marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring. They share their food but not their wives. They are “in the flesh”, but do not live “according to the flesh”. They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws; indeed in their private lives they transcend the laws. They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted. They are unknown, yet they are condemned; they are put to death, yet they are brought to life. They are poor, yet they make many rich; they are in need of everything, yet they abound in everything. They are dishonored, yet they are glorified in their dishonor; they are slandered, yet they are vindicated. They are cursed, yet they bless; they are insulted, yet they offer respect. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers; when they are punished, they rejoice as though brought to life....Those who hate them are unable to give a reason for their hostility."

"In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, which is invisible, is confined in the body, which is visible, in the same way, Christians are recognized as being in the world, and yet their religion remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wages war against it, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is hindered from indulging in its pleasures, so also the world hates the Christians, even though it has suffered no wrong, because they set themselves against its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and its members, and Christians love those who hate them. The soul is enclosed in the body, but it holds the body together; and though Christians are detained, in the world as if in a prison, they in fact hold the world together. The soul, which is immortal, lives in a mortal dwelling; similarly Christians live as strangers amidst perishable things, while waiting for the imperishable in heaven....Such is the important position to which God has appointed them."

"As Saviour He sent Him, and as seeking to persuade, not to compel us; for violence has no place in the character of God."

"It is not by ruling over his neighbours, or by seeking to hold the supremacy over those that are weaker, or by being rich, and showing violence towards those that are inferior, that happiness is found; nor can any one by these things become an imitator of God. But these things do not at all constitute His majesty. On the contrary he who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient; he who, whatsoever things he has received from God, by distributing these to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive: he is an imitator of God."

"Neither can life exist without knowledge, nor is knowledge secure without life. Wherefore both were planted close together."

"In the minds of the mortals of Urantia—that being the name of your world—there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity. Human beings are still more confused and uncertain about the relationships of the divine personalities designated by these numerous appellations. Because of this conceptual poverty associated with so much ideational confusion, I have been directed to formulate this introductory statement in explanation of the meanings which should be attached to certain word symbols as they may be hereinafter used in those papers which the Orvonton corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia."

"It is exceedingly difficult to present enlarged concepts and advanced truth, in our endeavor to expand cosmic consciousness and enhance spiritual perception, when we are restricted to the use of a circumscribed language of the realm. But our mandate admonishes us to make every effort to convey our meanings by using the word symbols of the English tongue. We have been instructed to introduce new terms only when the concept to be portrayed finds no terminology in English which can be employed to convey such a new concept partially or even with more or less distortion of meaning.In the hope of facilitating comprehension and of preventing confusion on the part of every mortal who may peruse these papers, we deem it wise to present in this initial statement an outline of the meanings to be attached to numerous English words which are to be employed in designation of Deity and certain associated concepts of the things, meanings, and values of universal reality."

"Your world, Urantia, is one of many similar inhabited planets which comprise the local universe of Nebadon. This universe, together with similar creations, makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton, from whose capital, Uversa, our commission hails. Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection—the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God."

"The Universal Father is the God of all creation, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and lastly as an infinite upholder. The truth about the Universal Father had begun to dawn upon mankind when the prophet said: "You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them. By the Sons of God were the universes made. The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain.""

"God is not hiding from any of his creatures. He is unapproachable to so many orders of beings only because he "dwells in a light which no material creature can approach." The immensity and grandeur of the divine personality is beyond the grasp of the unperfected mind of evolutionary mortals."

"The greatest punishment (in reality an inevitable consequence) for wrongdoing and deliberate rebellion against the government of God is loss of existence as an individual subject of that government. The final result of wholehearted sin is annihilation. In the last analysis, such sin-identified individuals have destroyed themselves by becoming wholly unreal through their embrace of iniquity."

"God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. And never is it necessary that any influence be brought to bear upon the Father to call forth his loving-kindness. The creature's need is wholly sufficient to insure the full flow of the Father's tender mercies and his saving grace. Since God knows all about his children, it is easy for him to forgive. The better man understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love him."

"The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath."

"There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are yours for the striving!The goal of eternity is ahead! The adventure of divinity attainment lies before you! The race for perfection is on! Whosoever will may enter, and certain victory will crown the efforts of every human being who will run the race of faith and trust, depending every step of the way on the leading of the indwelling Adjuster and on the guidance of that good spirit of the Universe Son, which so freely has been poured out upon all flesh."

"Religion achieves its highest social ministry when it has least connection with the secular institutions of society. In past ages, since social reforms were largely confined to the moral realms, religion did not have to adjust its attitude to extensive changes in economic and political systems. The chief problem of religion was the endeavor to replace evil with good within the existing social order of political and economic culture. Religion has thus indirectly tended to perpetuate the established order of society, to foster the maintenance of the existent type of civilization.But religion should not be directly concerned either with the creation of new social orders or with the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose violence as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural requirements.Religion did approve the occasional social reforms of past centuries, but in the twentieth century it is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to extensive and continuing social reconstruction. Conditions of living alter so rapidly that institutional modifications must be greatly accelerated, and religion must accordingly quicken its adaptation to this new and ever-changing social order."

"Life must continue to grow in meaningfulness; man must go on with his reformation of philosophy and his clarification of religion.Political science must effect the reconstruction of economics and industry by the techniques it learns from the social sciences and by the insights and motives supplied by religious living. In all social reconstruction religion provides a stabilizing loyalty to a transcendent object, a steadying goal beyond and above the immediate and temporal objective. In the midst of the confusions of a rapidly changing environment mortal man needs the sustenance of a far-flung cosmic perspective."

"Religion inspires man to live courageously and joyfully on the face of the earth; it joins patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power, and ideals with energy.Man can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of God and reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values.Economic interdependence and social fraternity will ultimately conduce to brotherhood. Man is naturally a dreamer, but science is sobering him so that religion can presently activate him with far less danger of precipitating fanatical reactions. Economic necessities tie man up with reality, and personal religious experience brings this same man face to face with the eternal realities of an ever-expanding and progressing cosmic citizenship."

"Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records."

"Religion effectually cures man's sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe."

"Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law."

"It is indeed a marvel of divine condescension for the exalted and perfect Adjusters to offer themselves for actual existence in the minds of material creatures, such as the mortals of Urantia, really to consummate a probationary union with the animal-origin beings of earth.No matter what the previous status of the inhabitants of a world, subsequent to the bestowal of a divine Son and after the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth upon all humans, the Adjusters flock to such a world to indwell the minds of all normal will creatures. Following the completion of the mission of a Paradise bestowal Son, these Monitors truly become the "kingdom of heaven within you.""

"The Adjuster is the mark of divinity, the presence of God. The "image of God" does not refer to physical likeness nor to the circumscribed limitations of material creature endowment but rather to the gift of the spirit presence of the Universal Father in the supernal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters upon the humble creatures of the universes."

"The Adjusters are the eternal ancestors, the divine originals, of your evolving immortal souls; they are the unceasing urge that leads man to attempt the mastery of the material and present existence in the light of the spiritual and future career. The Monitors are the prisoners of undying hope, the founts of everlasting progression. And how they do enjoy communicating with their subjects in more or less direct channels! How they rejoice when they can dispense with symbols and other methods of indirection and flash their messages straight to the intellects of their human partners!"

"You humans have begun an endless unfolding of an almost infinite panorama, a limitless expanding of never-ending, ever-widening spheres of opportunity for exhilarating service, matchless adventure, sublime uncertainty, and boundless attainment. When the clouds gather overhead, your faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster, and thus you should be able to look beyond the mists of mortal uncertainty into the clear shining of the sun of eternal righteousness on the beckoning heights of the mansion worlds of Satania."

"Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He experienced the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence, but he never religiously doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance. His faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither traditional nor merely intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely spiritual."

"The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the "will of the Father in heaven." Jesus' God was at one and the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and loving Father in heaven." The concept of God as a Father was not original with Jesus, but he exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by achieving a new revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal creature is a child of this Father of love, a son of God."

"Jesus did not cling to faith in God as would a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world; he did not resort to faith merely as a consolation in the midst of difficulties or as a comfort in threatened despair; faith was not just an illusory compensation for the unpleasant realities and the sorrows of living. In the very face of all the natural difficulties and the temporal contradictions of mortal existence, he experienced the tranquillity of supreme and unquestioned trust in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by faith, in the very presence of the heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living experience of actual spirit attainment. Jesus' great contribution to the values of human experience was not that he revealed so many new ideas about the Father in heaven, but rather that he so magnificently and humanly demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God. Never on all the worlds of this universe, in the life of any one mortal, did God ever become such a living reality as in the human experience of Jesus of Nazareth."

"To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it."

"Art results from man's attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of the material universe. Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his determination to find God and to be like him."

"In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail."

"The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness—contact with the divine presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons—mortal men. When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God."

"Sadler said he did not actually believe the revelatory power of the Urantia papers until 1936, when he read the descriptions of the apostles' personalities and character in paper 139. As a psychiatrist, he felt that no human could have written the essays."

"The UB's Jesus section is indeed a well-written, impressive work. Either it is accurate in its history, coming directly from higher beings in position to know, or it is a work of fertile imagination by someone who knew the New Testament by heart and who was also steeped in knowledge of the times when Jesus lived."

"The grand universe registry number of Urantia is 5,342,482,337,666 (UB 182). … Could it be that the thirteen digits in Urantia's registry number conceal some sort of message? I asked my old friend Dr. Irving Joshua Matrix, the world's most famous numerologist, for his opinion of this mysterious number. … Satan, Dr. Matrix reminded me, likes to take things backward. So let's reverse the number and partition it like so:666-73-328-42435The first three digits are, of course, the number assigned to the Beast, an incarnation of Satan, described in the Bible's last book. The next two digits, 7 and 3, add to 10, the number of letters in "Revelation". The three digits in the next set, 3, 2, and 8, add to 13, a chapter in Revelation. The last set of five digits, 4, 2, 4, 3, 5, add to 18, the number of a verse. Now Revelation 13:18 is the very verse in which 666 is assigned to the Beast!"

"Research has revealed that virtually all of the scientific material found in The Urantia Book was the accepted scientific knowledge of the period in which the book was written, was held by some scientists of that time, or was about to be discovered or recognized. … Scholarly evaluation shows that Urantia Book fundamentalism is just as untenable as Biblical fundamentalism."

"There are many sections in the book that can bring consternation when considered outside the context of the full revelation, race being one of them. … Regarding race, regarding humanity in general and regarding the composition of the book—most of the first 119 out of the 196 Papers are written by highly intelligent beings who have never been human, beings of higher origin than humans, "angels". As the lowest order of free will creature in existence we humans now find ourselves reading about our origin, nature, and destiny as perceived from a higher and non-human perspective, sources not so sentimental about our shortcomings as we obviously are."

"The book was probably written by a Chicago physician and student of Freud named William Sadler who had already been involved in other cults. … Sadler was interested in race eugenics, a field of study that seeks to remove "inferior" kinds of people from the gene pool. One of Sadler's favorite books before The Urantia Book was Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race, which says that nordic people are the "ideal" human race and "getting rid of" other races would "enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums.""

"According to Urantias text, half a million years ago, six colored races existed on our planet: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo. Again, according to the text, there was a racial superiority order with the indigo race at the bottom, in which, as it notes, "the blue man subdues the indigo" [UB 51:4.6]. It oddly states that strains of giantism can appear in green and orange peoples. The upshot of all of this is that on every planet in every universe, fair-skinned, blue-eyed aliens named Adam and Eve come and up-step the natives, meaning that they eliminate the inferior stocks and purify the planet."

"It is not I who seek the young fool; The young fool seeks me."

"To nourish oneself on ancient virtue induces perseverance."

"An army must set forth in proper order. If the order is not good, misfortune threatens."

"The superior man falls back upon his inner worth In order to escape the difficulties. He does not permit himself to be honored with revenue."

"He whose truth is accessible, yet dignified, Has good fortune."

"No boasting of wealth before one's neighbor."

"It is unlucky to sound off about happiness."

"To go one's way with sincerity brings clarity."

"Those above can ensure their position Only by giving generously to those below."

"The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity And many deeds of the past, In order to strengthen his character thereby."

"If you are sincere, you have success in your heart, And whatever you do succeeds."

"The great man, by perpetuating this brightness, Illumines the four quarters of the world."

"When tempers flare up in the family, Too great severity brings remorse."

"Thus the superior man controls his anger And restrains his instincts."

"Thus the superior man: If he sees good, he imitates it; If he has faults, he rids himself of them."

"The superior man encourages the people at their work, And exhorts them to help one another."

"Fire in the lake: the image of revolution."

"When one's own day comes, one may create revolution."

"Change proves true on the day it is finished."

"Thus in fear and trembling The superior man sets his life in order And examines himself."

"Cultured people practice self-examination with trepidation and fear."

"Keeping his back still So that he no longer feels his body. He goes into his courtyard And does not see his people. No blame. True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life. The hexagram signifies the end and the beginning of all movement."

"Thus the superior man Understands the transitory In the light of the eternity of the end."

"Wind over lake: the image of inner truth. Thus the superior man discusses criminal cases In order to delay executions."

"Perseverance brings good fortune."

"Cary F. Baynes (from the German translation by Richard Wilhelm), The 'I Ching' or 'Book of Changes, Bollingen Series, vol. 19 (Princeton UP, 1950)"

"Thomas Cleary, reported in Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005) p. 428, Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (2005) p. 428, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) p. 382"

"First take up the words, Ponder their meaning, Then the fixed rules reveal themselves. But if you are not the right man, The meaning will not manifest itself to you."

"The Book of Changes, in a word, is a kind of geometry of mythology... It tells of the readiness of time and the art of moving with its tides, rocking with the waves, and is the most important statement remaining to us of that aspect of ancient Chinese thought which relates the individual to the order of the outer world."

"The I Ching is the world's oldest guide to 'the virtuous life'."

"The purpose of the I Ching or the tarot … is to help you get access to yourself, by providing ambiguity for you to interpret. And this quality of ambiguity is shared with nearly all forms of divination — cast artifacts, or entrails, or weather formations, or events such as the flight of birds, that one could choose either to see as "omens" or to ignore. The very thing that makes these divination techniques seem so unscientific is what makes it possible for them to work."

"There is a book called the I-Ching, I'm not trying to push it, I don't want to talk about it, but it's the only thing that is amazingly true, period, not just for me. Anybody would know it. Anybody that ever walks would know it. It's a whole system of finding out things, based on all sorts of things. You don't have to believe in anything to read it, because beside being a great book to believe in it's also very fantastic poetry."

"I threw the I-Ching yesterday, it said there might be some thunder at the well."

"Whatever you do, be sure to let your readers know that every sentence can be read in an almost infinite number of ways! That is the secret of the book. No one will ever know what it really means!"

"The I Ching does not offer itself with proofs and results; it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part of nature, it waits until it is discovered. It offers neither facts nor power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom—if there be such—it seems to be the right book. To one person its spirit appears as clear as day; to another, shadowy as twilight; to a third, dark as night. He who is not pleased by it does not have to use it, and he who is against it is not obliged to find it true. Let it go forth into the world for the benefit of those who can discern its meaning."

"Its name, "The Book of Changes," is suggestive; and we find throughout its contents the vague idea of change replaced by the more definite one of "transformation," the key-word of alchemy... "The diagrams," [Confucius] says again, "comprehend the profoundest secrets of the universe; and the power of exciting the various motions of the universe depends on their explanation;—the power to effect transmutation depends on the understanding of the diagrams of changes." Here, in a word, is the...general object of Chinese students of alchemy."

"The origins of astronomy can be found in the I Ching. Using the principle of astronomy, calendrical studies, and the I Ching to understand thoroughly the meaning of the unity of heaven and man is difficult. Nevertheless, we should study the I Ching little by little and fuse it with the principles of astronomy and calendrical studies. Then we can investigate the similarities in all things."

"The "Book of Changes" is regarded with almost universal reverence, both on account of its antiquity and also the unfathomable wisdom which is supposed to lie concealed under its mysterious symbols."

"Das Ich des Grundworts Ich-Du ist ein andres als das des Grundworts Ich-Es."

"Grundworte sagen nicht etwas aus, was außer ihnen bestünde, sondern gesprochen stiften sie einen Bestand."

"Es gibt kein Ich an sich, sondern nur das Ich des Grundworts Ich-Du und das Ich des Grundworts Ich-Es. Wenn der Mensch Ich spricht, meint er eins von beiden. Das Ich, das er meint, dieses ist da, wenn er Ich spricht. … Wer ein Grundwort spricht, tritt in das Wort ein und steht darin."

"Das ist der ewige Ursprung der Kunst, daß einem Menschen Gestalt gegenübertritt und durch ihn Werk werden will. Keine Ausgeburt seine Seele, sondern Erscheinung, die an sie tritt und von ihr die wirkende Kraft erheischt. Es kommt auf eine Wesenstat des Menschen an: vollzieht er sie, spricht er mit seinem Wesen das Grundwort zu der erscheinenden Gestalt, dann strömt die wirkende Kraft, das Werk entsteht."

"Das Du begegnet mir. Aber ich trete in die unmittelbare Beziehung zu ihm. So ist die Beziehung Erwähltwerden und Erwählen, Passion und Aktion in einem. Wie denn eine Aktion des ganzen Wesens, als die Aufhebung aller Teilhandlungen und somit aller—nur in deren Grenzhaftigkeit gegründeter—Handlungsempfindungen, der Passion ähnlich werden muß."

"Das aber ist die erhabene Schwermut unseres Loses, daß jedes Du in unsrer Welt zum Es werden muß. So ausschließlich gegenwärtig es in der unmittelbaren Beziehung war: sowie sie sich ausgewirkt hat oder vom Mittel durchsetzt worden ist, wird es zum Gegenstand unter Gegenständen."

"Dem ursprünglichen Walten des „Selbst“-Erhaltungstriebs haftet das Ichbewusstsein ebensowenig an wie dem der anderen Triebe; nicht das Ich will sich da fortpflanzen, sondern der Leib, der noch von keinem Ich weiß."

"Die Begegnungserlebnisse des Urmenschen waren gewiß nicht zahmes Wohlgefallen; aber besser noch Gewalt am real erlebten Wesen als die gespenstische Fürsorge an antlitzlosen Nummern! Von jener führt ein Weg zu Gott, von dieser nur der ins Nichts."

"All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him."

"How much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others."

"The first wrote, Wine is the strongest. The second wrote, The king is strongest. The third wrote, Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory."

"Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory."

"By this also ye must know that women have dominion over you: do ye not labour and toil, and give and bring all to the women? Yea, a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and upon rivers; And looketh upon a lion, and goeth in the darkness; and when he hath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love."

"Truth is great, and stronger than all things. The whole earth calls upon truth, and heaven blesses it. All God’s works quake and tremble, and with him there is nothing unrighteous. Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, all human beings are unrighteous, all their works are unrighteous, and all such things. There is no truth in them and in their unrighteousness they will perish. But truth endures and is strong forever, and lives and prevails forever and ever. With it there is no partiality or preference, but it does what is righteous instead of anything that is unrighteous or wicked. Everyone approves its deeds, and there is nothing unrighteous in its judgment. To it belongs the strength and the kingship and the power and the majesty of all the ages. Blessed be the God of truth!"

"Great is truth, and mighty above all things."

"I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing."

"Of course there were doubts about it, there always had been; when you found out about all the other holy books there had ever been throughout the histories of other peoples throughout the galaxy, you realised how common they were, and how fallible, how restricted they were by the usual tribal prejudices and traditions of the people who – it took real blind faith not to accept – had made them up."

"SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based."

"'Tis a dangerous thing to engage the authority of scripture in disputes about the natural world, in opposition to reason; lest time, which brings all things to light, should discover that to be evidently false which we had made scripture to assert … We are not to suppose that any truth concerning the natural world can be an enemy to religion; for truth cannot be an enemy to truth, God is not divided against himself."

"For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any books however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly."

"Faith has no less need of the word than the fruit of a tree has of a living root."

"When the mind has taken in the meaning of a passage in any Psalm, this insensibly slips away from it, and ignorantly and thoughtlessly it passes on to a text of some other Scripture. And when it has begun to consider this with itself, while it is still not thoroughly explored, the recollection of some other passage springs up, and shuts out the consideration of the former subject. From this too it is transferred to some other, by the entrance of some fresh consideration, and the soul always turns about from Psalm to Psalm and jumps from a passage in the Gospels to read one in the Epistles, and from this passes on to the prophetic writings, and thence is carried to some spiritual history, and so it wanders about vaguely and uncertainly through the whole body of the Scriptures, unable, as it may choose, either to reject or keep hold of anything, or to finish anything by fully considering and examining it, and so becomes only a toucher or taster of spiritual meanings, not an author and possessor of them."

"People who claim to derive their morals from scripture do not really do so in practice. And a very good thing too, as they themselves, on reflection, should agree."

"In any case, despite the good intentions of the sophisticated theologian, a frighteningly large number of people still do take their scriptures, including the story of Noah, literally. According to Gallup, they include approximately 50 per cent of the US electorate. Also, no doubt, many of those Asian holy men who blamed the 2004 tsunami not on a plate tectonic shift but on human sins, ranging from drinking and dancing in bars to breaking some footling sabbath rule. Steeped in the story of Noah, and ignorant of all except biblical learning, who can blame them? Their whole education has led them to view natural disasters as bound up with human affairs, paybacks for human misdemeanours rather than anything so impersonal as plate tectonics."

"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations."

"Scriptura cum legentibus crescit."

"Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Ibi etenim foeda, ibi pulehra nostra cognoscimus."

"It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truths announced in the Holy Scriptures, and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord."

"The reason why all those we have mentioned hold false opinions and make impious or ignorant assertions about God appears to be nothing else but this, that scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is interpreted according to the bare letter."

"Hank's scriptures were so marked up, it looked like he was having an argument with God. (he was)."

"Our contention with regard to the whole of divine scripture is that it all has a spiritual meaning, but not all a bodily meaning; for the bodily meaning is often proved to be an impossibility."

"But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture, Tell them that God bids us do good for evil: And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

"[W]hen we want to speak to God, we pray. And when we want Him to speak to us, we search the scriptures"

"A miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity; and, therefore, ... what is meant in Scripture by a miracle can only be a work of nature, which surpasses, or is believed to surpass, human comprehension."

"Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion; and therefore it speaks inaccurately of God and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred."

"“It must be emphasised that the process of polarisation of relations between the Ahuras and the DaEvas is already complete in the GAthAs, whereas, in the Rigveda, the reverse process of polarisation between the Devas and the Asuras, which does not begin before the later parts of the Rigveda, develops as it were before our very eyes, and is not completed until the later Vedic period. Thus, it is not at all likely that the origins of the polarisation are to be sought in the prehistorical, the Proto-Aryan period. More likely, ZarathuStra’s reform was the result of interdependent developments, when Irano-Indian contacts still persisted at the dawn of history. With their Ahura-DaEva ideology, the Mazdayasnians, guided by their prophet, deliberately dissociated themselves from the Deva-Asura concept which was being developed, or had been developed, in India, and probably also in the adjacent Iranian-speaking countries… All this suggests a synchrony between the later Vedic period and ZarathuStra’s reform in Iran.”"

"“The fact [is] that Avestan geography, particularly the list in Vd. I, is confined to the east,” ...[this list is] “remarkably important in reconstructing the early history of Zoroastrianism”. ..."

"[The horizon of the Avesta] “is according to Burrow, wholly eastern and therefore certainly earlier than the westward migrations of the Iranian tribes.” ..."

"[the attempt to transpose the geography of the Avesta from Afghanistan to western Iran] “was doubtless due to different attempts made by the most powerful religious centres of western Iran and the influential order of the Magi to appropriate the traditions of Zoroastrianism that had flourished in the eastern territories of the plateau in far-off times. Without a doubt, the identification of RaYa with AdurbAdagAn, more or less parallel with its identification with Ray, should be fitted into the vaster picture of the late location of Airyana VaEjah in ADarbAyjAn.” ..."

"“With VarAna and RaNhA, as of course with Hapta HAndu, which comes between them in the Vd. I list, we find ourselves straight away in Indian territory, or, at any rate, in territory that, from the very earliest times, was certainly deeply permeated by Indo-Aryans or Proto-Indoaryans.” ..."

"[the Avesta reflects] “an historical situation in which Iranian elements exist side by side with … Aryan or Proto-Indoaryan (elements)”. ..."

"To point to the list of words common to the Avesta and viii [of the Rigveda] with its group, and say that here is proof positive that there is closer relationship with the Avesta, and that, therefore, viii after all is older than the books which have not preserved these words, some of which are of great significance, would be a first thought. But this explanation is barred out by the fact that most of these Avestan words preserved in viii, withal those of the most importance, are common words in the literature posterior to the Rik. Hence to make the above claim would be tantamount to saying that these words have held their own through the period to which viii (assuming it to be older than ii-vii) is assigned, have thereupon disappeared, and then come into vogue again after the interval to which the maker of this assumption would assign ii-vii. This, despite all deprecation of negative evidence, is not credible. Take, for instance, udara or uṣṭra or meṣa, the first is found only in viii., i., x.; the second in viii., i.; the last in viii., i., ix., x. Is it probable that words so common both early and late should have passed through an assumedly intermediate period (of ii.-vii.) without leaving a trace? Or, again: is a like assumption credible in the case of kṣīra, which appears in the Iranian khshīra; in RV. viii., i., ix., x.; disappears in the assumedly later group ii.-vii.; and reappears in the AV. and later literature as a common word? Evidently, the facts are not explained on the hypothesis that the Avesta and RV. viii. are older than RV. ii.-vii. We must, I think, suppose that the Avesta and RV. viii. are younger than RV. ii.-vii.; or else that the poets of viii. were geographically nearer to the Avestan people, and so took from them certain words, which may or may not have been old with their Iranian users, but were not received into the body of Vedic literature until a time posterior to the composition of ii.-vii."―[....] viii with the General Books and post-Rik literature agrees with Avestan as against the early family books" "[....] viii joins the later Avesta to post-Rik literature and the other General Books."

"“Not only in grammatical structure and vocabulary, but also in literary form, in certain metres like the TriSTubh and in a way GAyatrI, there is resemblance between the Avesta and the Rgveda. The fact is usually mentioned in good manuals. But there is a peculiarity about these points of resemblance which is not so commonly known: It is the eighth MaNDala which bears the most striking similarity to the Avesta. There and there only (and of course partly in the related first MaNDala) do some common words like uSTra and the strophic structure called pragAtha occur. … Further research in this direction is sure to be fruitful.”"

"“Two Young Avestan texts contain lists of countries known to their authors, YaSt 10 and VidEvdAd, Chapter 1. The two lists differ considerably in terms of composition and are therefore most probably independent of one another. Both lists contain only countries in northeastern Iran.” ...[All these places are] “located to the east of the Caspian Ocean, with the possible exception of Raga”."

"“H. Oldenberg showed that in spite of the genetic closeness of religious beliefs, the Vedas and Avesta differ considerably, and that in the Avesta many of the heroes play opposite roles to their counterparts in the Veda.” (p.183)"

"But the apostle again rejects the king’s plea to reform, and so “Misdaeus considered how he shoul{d put him to death; for he was afraid because of the many people who were subject unto him, for many also of the nobles and of them that were in authority believed on him. He took him therefore and went out of the city; and armed soldiers went with him. And the people supposed that the king desired to learn somewhat of him, and they stood still and gave heed. And when they had walked one mile, he delivered him unto four soldiers and an officer, and commanded them to take him into the mountain and there pierce him with spears and put an end to him, and return again to the city. And saying thus unto the soldiers, he himself also returned unto the city."

"And Misdaeus saith unto him: I have not made haste to destroy thee, but have had long patience with thee: but thou has added unto thine evil deeds, and thy sorceries are dispersed abroad and heard of throughout all this country: but this I do that thy sorceries may depart with thee, and our land be cleansed from them.”"

"And he said unto Iuzanes: Thou son of the earthly king Misdaeus andminister to the minister of our Lord Jesus Christ: give unto the servants of Misdaeus their price that they may suffer me to go and pray. And Iuzanes persuaded the soldiers to let him pray. And the blessed Thomas went to pray, and kneeled down and rose up and stretched forth his hands unto heaven ... and when he had thus prayed he said unto the soldiers: Come hither and accomplish the commandments of him that sent you. And the four came and pierced him with their spears, and he fell down dead."

"“Now it came to pass after a long time that one of the children of Misadeus the king was smitten by a devil, and no man could cure him, for the devil was exceedingly fierce. And Misdaeus the king took thought and said: I will go and open the sepulchre, and take a bone of the apostle of God and hang it upon my son, and he shall be healed ... and he went and opened the sepulchre, but found not the apostle there, for one of the brethren had stolen him away and taken him unto Mesopotamia; but from that place where the bones of the apostle had lain Misdaeus took dust and put it about his son’s neck, saying: I believe on thee, Jesus Christ, now that he hath left me which troubleth men and opposeth them lest they should see thee. And when he had hung it upon his son, the lad became whole."

"“Misdaeus the king therefore was also gathered among the brethren, and bowed his head under the hands of Siphor the priest; and Siphor said unto the brethren: Pray ye for Misdaeus the king, that he may obtain mercy of Jesus Christ, and that he may no longer remember evil against him. They all therefore, with one accord rejoicing, made prayer for him ... and he was gathered with the multitude of them that had believed in Christ, glorifying the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; whose is power and adoration, now and forever and world without end. Amen.”"

"Pseudepigraphic text which relates the adventures of the apostle Judas Thomas as he preaches an ascetical or encratite form of Christianity on the way to and from India. Like other apocryphal acts combining popular legend and religious propaganda, the work attempts to entertain and instruct. In addition to narratives of Thomas' adventures, its poetic and liturgical elements provide important evidence for early Syrian Christian traditions."

"“There is endless discussion about St. Thomas’s subsequent life. In particular, did he take the gospel to India, where for many centuries the Christians of Kerala have called themselves ‘St. Thomas Christians’? That he did so, and was martyred there, is the theme of a long document of the third or fourth century, called the Acts of Thomas. This is one of the most readable and intrinsically interesting of early Christian apocryphal writings; but it is no more than a popular romance, written in the interest of false Gnostic teachings (e.g. the virtual necessity of celibacy for Christians). It is not impossible that St. Thomas should have reached southern India, but the historical reality of his mission there cannot be considered proved. It is also said that he evangelized Parthia, and in the fourth century his relics were claimed to be at Edessa in Mesopotamia.”"

"“In what literature is the name of St. Thomas first associated with India? It will appear I think the home of that literature, the original hotbed in which it was reared, was no other than the Church of Edessa. For there is no place within the area occupied, by the language in which those books were written, that had any such interest in the fortunes and destiny of the Apostle. The story of Thomas preaching and his martyrdom in India is first found in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas and it is curious to note that throughout the work the Apostle is generally called Judas Thomas, a name which he also received in that group of documents which Eusebius found among the archives at Edessa. It is palpably a Gnostic work and students of Gnosticism, judging from the stages of development at which they find the heresy in the Acts, assign it to the end of the second century. It may have been written by Bardesanes. But whoever the real author was, I think the details of this work are not only consistent with the belief that they were put together by a member of the Edessene Church, but also defy explanation on any other hypothesis.”"

"The source of the Thomas legend is an apocryphal text called the Acts of Thomas. If the [Jesuits and other Christian] missionaries want to continue to present it as history rather than legend, they should accept the consequences. In that case, they must tell the public about the way in which Thomas's journey to India started, according to the very same text: he left Palestine because his twin brother Jesus sold him as a slave (Thomas is also called Didymus, "the twin brother"). They must give details of the destructive sorcery which Thomas practised, as in his first miracle, when he made a lion devour a boy for being impolite. They must tell the public that Thomas was put to death not by the ugly Brahmins but by the king who, after having had a lot of patience with him, and after offering him a safe exit from the country, decided to put a stop to his practice of luring women away from their homes and putting them in sackcloth and ashes behind locked doors, etc."

"This king (Misdaeus) is better known by his Persian name, Mazdai, which is found in the Syriac version of the Acts (Misdaeus is Greek). It specifically denotes a Zoroastrian ruler. He has no known historical counterpart and the Acts gives no vital information about him except to say that he rules in “a desert country”."

"Let none read the gospel according to Thomas, for it is the work, not of one of the twelve apostles, but of one of Mani's three wicked disciples."

"The story of Thomas’s Indian sojourn exists only in the Acts of Thomas. This long religious romance was probably written by the Syrian Gnostic poet Bardesanes about 210 CE at Edessa, Syria. Bardesanes was familiar with India and had met and discussed Indian philosophy with Buddhist monks travelling west to Alexandria. It was therefore quite natural for him to place his moral fable in India, a land from which all kinds of religious ideas emanated."

"Bardesanes story is centred on the moral imperative that all Christians must lead a chaste and celibate life. In the story he has Judas Thomas, who is presented as a look-alike twin brother of Jesus, persuade a newly married royal couple not to consummate their marriage. This angers the Parthian king of the desert land where Thomas is present and he has to flee for his life to another part of the country. Here he comes into contact with another Parthian king called Gundaphorus―possibly a first century king of Gandhara i.e. North-West Pakistan―and promises to build him a palace. Thomas cheats the king of his money but succeeds in converting him to Christianity. He then leaves Gundaphorus and concerns himself with a talking donkey and a dragon who claims to be Satan. Thomas slays the dragon, but because of his interest in converting the women and girls of the area to Christianity and alienating them from family life, is called before a third Parthian king called Mazdai―Mazdai being a Zoroastrian name after the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda―and ordered to leave the country. When Thomas ignores the king’s warning and converts the queen and her son, the king in exasperation at the apostle’s evil deeds orders him executed. He is then speared to death by soldiers on a royal acropolis and the body shortly afterward taken away to Edessa. In all records Thomas is executed on the Parthian royal acropolis and soon after buried at Edessa where a cult grows up around his tomb―until Marco Polo in his famous travel book, Il Milione, puts his tomb on the seashore in an unnamed little town in South India. Marco, who never came to India, was repeating the stories told to him by Muslim and Syrian Christian merchants he met in Constantinople."

"Though Bardesanes represents Judas Thomas as a second Christ, he does not represent him as a good man. What we gather from the story in the Acts, and what Fr. Francis and his Church neglect to tell the faithful, is that Jesus was a slave trader who sold Thomas to Abbanes for thirty pieces of silver; Thomas was an antisocial character who lied to his royal employer and stole money from him; Thomas ill-treated women and enslaved them; Thomas practised black magic and was executed for disobeying the king’s order to stop and leave the country; Thomas was Jesus’s twin brother, implying that the four canonical Gospels are unreliable sources which have concealed a crucial fact, viz. that Jesus was not God’s Only Begotten Son. In fact, Jesus and Thomas were God’s twin-born sons. In other words, accepting the Thomas legend as history is equivalent to exploding the doctrinal foundation of Christianity."

"Then were the entrances of this world made narrow, full of sorrow and travail: they are but few and evil, full of perils, and very painful For the entrances of the elder world were wide and sure, and brought immortal fruit. If then they that live labour not to enter these strait and van things, they can never receive those that are laid up for them."

"You are not a better judge than the LORD, or wiser than the Most High!"

"When the Most High made the world and Adam and all who have come from him, he first prepared the judgment and the things that pertain to the judgment."

"For the world hath lost his youth, and the times begin to wax old."

"Now, I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah"

"You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah"

"I remember when I moved in you And the holy dove she was moving too, And every single breath that we drew was Hallelujah."

"I did my best, it wasn't much I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong I'll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah."

"I know there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And before this great force, which is greater than any government, I stand in awe and I kneel in respect, and it is to this great judgment that I dedicate this next song, "Hallelujah"."

"My sweet Lord (Hallelujah) Hm, my Lord (Hallelujah) My, my, my Lord (Hallelujah) I really want to know you (Hallelujah) Really want to go with you (Hallelujah) Really want to show you Lord (ahh) That it won't take long, my Lord (Hallelujah) Hmm (Hallelujah) My sweet Lord (Hallelujah) My, my, Lord (Hallelujah) Hm, my Lord (Hare Krishna) My, my, my Lord (Hare Krishna)"

"My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was to sneak up on them a bit.' The point was to have the people not offended by "Hallelujah", and by the time it gets to "Hare Krishna," they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already singing along "Hallelujah,".... And then suddenly it turns into "Hare Krishna," and they will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they will think, "Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna!""

"The Oxford English Dictionary defines hallelujah as “a song or shout of praise to God,” but biblical scholars will tell you it’s actually a smash-up of two Hebrew words: “hallel” meaning “to praise” and “jah” meaning Yahweh, or God. But that’s just the official meaning. For Grant Gershon, director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, hallelujah is a perfect word because it can take on different meanings. “It’s this sound that is just so full of possibilities,” he said. “You can fill it with whatever you need to say or communicate.” In Handel’s great chorus, the word is joyous, victorious, accompanied by trumpets and drums. In Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “All Night Vigil,” however, hallelujah reflects a more quiet devotion. Repeated over and over again, it serves... as a mantra."

"שְׁפִילִית לְסֵיפֵיהּ דַּעֲווֹן גִּלְיוֹן, וּכְתִיב בֵּיהּ: אֲנָא לָא לְמִיפְחַת מִן אוֹרָיְיתָא דְּמֹשֶׁה אֲתֵיתִי [וְלָא] לְאוֹסֹפֵי עַל אוֹרָיְיתָא דְמֹשֶׁה אֲתֵיתִי}}"

"אֲזַל אַסְּקֵיהּ בִּנְגִידָא לְיֵשׁוּ הַנּוֹצְרִי, אֲמַר לֵיהּ: מַאן חֲשִׁיב בְּהָהוּא עָלְמָא? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: יִשְׂרָאֵל. מַהוּ לְאִדַּבּוֹקֵי בְּהוּ? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: טוֹבָתָם דְּרוֹשׁ, רָעָתָם לֹא תִּדְרוֹשׁ, כׇּל הַנּוֹגֵעַ בָּהֶן כְּאִילּוּ נוֹגֵעַ בְּבָבַת עֵינוֹ.}}"

"That the Talmud and other Jewish sources say nothing about Jesus which is not the distortion of Christian tradition is sufficiently explained by the date of these documents and the fact that those who compiled them were governed by entirely polemical considerations."

"These Talmud stories seem as though they are deliberately intended to contradict events recorded in the Gospels: the selfsame facts are perverted into bad and blameable acts."

"The Jesus or Jehoshua ben-Pandira (or ben-Stada) of the Gemara is a shady character who in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103–78 )—different versions give different dates—learns magic in Egypt, leads the people astray, and is stoned to death and hanged at Lydda. ... The character of Jesus is blackened, his miracles are explained by magic, his trial is made out to have been regular and fair, and so forth."

"It is now more than half a century since Renan put the question, "Has Jewish tradition anything to teach us concerning Jesus?" This question must be answered in the negative. ... The Jewish legend—a growth of those later centuries—gave him an aspect of its own, purely apocryphal in its character, neither meant nor ever taken by the Jews as real history."

"Some rabbis take the point of view—listen carefully—that yes, the true story of Jesus is in our Talmud, not in the Christian Bible. Meaning that when you have a problem of reconciling the Christian version of who Jesus was with the Jewish versions, some rabbis take the point of view: "Yeah, the Talmud gets it right. And the Christian scriptures? It's not accurate.""

"At the conclusion of a class at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2000, during which I quoted passages from the New Testament, a student approached me and asked whether I would be citing more quotes in future classes. I told her that I would give her two answers. The first: yes. The second: In all the 2,700 pages of the Babylonian Talmud, there is only one quotation from a non-Jewish book, namely from the New Testament (Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat 116a-b). What is allowed to the Talmud is allowed also to a talmid (pupil). She never showed up in my classes again."

"שׁוּב מַעֲשֶׂה בְּגוֹי אֶחָד שֶׁבָּא לִפְנֵי שַׁמַּאי. אָמַר לוֹ׃ גַּיְּירֵנִי עַל מְנָת שֶׁתְּלַמְּדֵנִי כׇּל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ כְּשֶׁאֲנִי עוֹמֵד עַל רֶגֶל אַחַת! דְּחָפוֹ בְּאַמַּת הַבִּנְיָן שֶׁבְּיָדוֹ. בָּא לִפְנֵי הִלֵּל, גַּיְירֵיהּ. אָמַר לוֹ׃ דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵיד — זוֹ הִיא כׇּל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ, וְאִידַּךְ פֵּירוּשָׁהּ הוּא, זִיל גְּמוֹר.}}"

"רבי מאיר אומר מנין שאפילו עובד כוכבים ועוסק בתורה שהוא ככהן גדול תלמוד לומר (ויקרא יח, ה) אשר יעשה אותם האדם וחי בהם כהנים לוים וישראלים לא נאמר אלא האדם הא למדת שאפילו עובד כוכבים ועוסק בתורה הרי הוא ככהן גדול}}"

"ר״מ אומר מניין שאפילו עובד כוכבים ועוסק בתורה שהוא ככהן גדול שנאמר (ויקרא יח, ה) אשר יעשה אותם האדם וחי בהם כהנים לוים וישראלים לא נאמר אלא האדם הא למדת שאפילו עובד כוכבים ועוסק בתורה הרי הוא ככהן גדול}}"

"התם בשבע מצות דידהו׃}}"

"אָמַר רִבִּי שַׁבְּתָי כְּתִיב וּמִשְׁפָּט וְרֹב צְדָקָה לֹא יַעֲנֶה. אֵין הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַשְׁהֵא מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל עוֹשֵׂי מִצְוֹת בַּגּוֹיִם.}}"

"אֲבָל יֵשׁ קִנְיָן לְגוֹי בְּאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל לַחְפּוֹר בָּהּ בּוֹרוֹת שִׁיחִין וּמְעָרוֹת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר׃ ״הַשָּׁמַיִם שָׁמַיִם לַה׳ וְהָאָרֶץ נָתַן לִבְנֵי אָדָם״.}}"

"ואמר ר׳ יוחנן עובד כוכבים שעוסק בתורה חייב מיתה שנאמר (דברים לג, ד) תורה צוה לנו משה מורשה לנו מורשה ולא להם}}"

"וליחשבה גבי שבע מצות מ״ד מורשה מיגזל קא גזיל לה מאן דאמר מאורסה דינו כנערה המאורסה דבסקילה}}"

"כׇּל שִׁיטָּה וְשִׁיטָּה שֶׁנָּטְלוּ גּוֹיִם מִירוּשָׁלַיִם, עָתִיד הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְהַחֲזִירָן לָהּ}}"

"Gentiles are unquestionably human, created in G-d's image, and Jewish law recognizes this as do the rabbis of the Talmud."

"​或る日天使生長の家に来たりて歌い給うー"

"神が一切のものを造りたまうや"

"感覚はこれ信念の影を視るに過ぎず。"

"惑障ことごとく消滅し、"

"物質は畢竟『無』にしてそれ自身の性質あることなし。"

"生命の實相を知る者は"

"​智慧はこれ本来神のひかり、"

"吾が心がみずから描きし夢によって"

"無明はあらざるものをありと想像するが故に無明なり。"

"我れは此の仮面を剥いで"

"汝ら、よく人間の実相を悟るべし、"

"光と光源とは一体なるが如く"

"汝ら明かに知れ、繭は蚕に非ず、"

"人間の本体は生命なるが故に"

"Their houses were plundered, wealth destroyed, their heads shaven, urinated upon, publicly paraded, jeered upon, beaten with shoes and finally sent to death."

"They told me further, that some years after this book of Naneek Shah had been promulgated, another made its appearance, now held in almost as much esteem as the former. The name of the author has escaped my memory; but they favoured me with an extract from the book itself in praise of the Deity. The passage had struck my ear on my first entering the hall, when the students were all engaged in reading. From the familiarity of the language to the Hindoovee, and many Shanscrit words, I was able to understand a good deal of it, and I hope, at some future period, to have the honour of laying a translation of it before the Society."

"Know that truthfulness is equivalent to belief (iman) and to the confession of the Unitarian doctrine (tawhid) in ail its perfection. Lying is polytheism, unbelief, and error."

"Let no one of you fear anything but her sin, and let her place her hope on none but God."

"Tell the truth and fear nothing but your sin, and worship none other than your God."

"Happy is he who pursues wisdom to the exclusion of everything else, whose mind and heart the light of wisdom has filled to overflowing, who devotes himself with all his being to meditation in the company of God’s elect. Happy is he who has made wisdom his heart’s abode, to whom its pursuit is the most precious acquisition, who treasures it in himself as in a stronghold inaccessible to those who are not its disciples."

"If human minds would be given the knowledge of God without any familiarization and gradation, those human minds would swoon and fall down."

"...the originator of the perfect Aql. He virtually bound within it all the created beings, so that nothing might be outside of it."

"O you who are distracted, how can he who is devoid of his corporeal means obtain knowledge? O you who are heedless, how can he who abandoned his sensual faculty reach ignorance? And O you who are perplexed, how can the souls exist by themselves? And how can they settle in their origin, and yet have a life and procure their pleasures?"

"Believing in the non-existence negates existence as such. It is a way that leads to unbelief, atheism, and denial."

"Protect divine knowledge from those who do not deserve it and do not withhold it from those who are deserving. He who withholds divine knowledge from those who are worthy of it, will indeed desecrate what he has been entrusted with and will commit sacrilege against his religion; and the conviction of him who divulges it to those who are not deserving will be diverted from following the truth. Scripture must therefore be protected from those who do not deserve it."

"Protect yourselves from ignorance with the help of the knowledge of the unity of our Lord..."

"I enjoin you to safeguard your fellow men. In safeguarding them your faith reaches perfection."

"In the Dachau prison camp near Munich, Germany, we remember Marian Konopiński, priest and martyr, a Polish national who, patiently enduring the cruel torture inflicted by his tormentors, gave his life for Christ the Lord. (1 January)"

"In Rome, deposition of Saint Telesphorus, pope, who, according to the testimony of Saint Irenaeus, seventh bishop consecrated by the Apostles, received glorious martyrdom. (2 January)"

"Memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr, who, while still a girl in Rome, offered the supreme witness of faith and consecrated the virtue of chastity with martyrdom; in fact, she overcame both her young age and the tyranny of the tyrant and thus gained great admiration among the people, obtaining even greater glory with God. On this day, we celebrate the deposition of her mortal remains. (21 January)"

"Memorial of St. Agatha, virgin and martyr, who, while still young, in Catania, Sicily, during the raging persecution, preserved the purity of her body and the integrity of her faith in martyrdom, offering her testimony for Christ the Lord. (5 February)"

"In Alexandria, Egypt, remembrance of St. Apollonia, who, after numerous and horrible tortures inflicted by her persecutors because she refused to utter sacrilegious words, preferred to be burned at the stake rather than renounce her Christian faith. (9 February)"

"In the city of Xilinxian, in the province of Guangxi in China, remembrance of St. Agnes Cao Kuiying, martyr, who, already married to a violent man, after his death devoted herself to teaching Christian doctrine on behalf of the bishop, and for this reason, after being thrown into prison and enduring terrible torments, always trusting in God, she then went to the eternal banquet. (1 March)"

"In Oberkaufungen in Hesse, Germany, Saint Cunigonde: she brought many benefits to the Church together with her husband Saint Henry the Emperor, and after his death, she herself migrated to the Lord in the convent where she had retired as a nun, making Christ her inheritance. Her body was laid to rest with full honours next to the remains of Saint Henry in Bamberg. (3 March)"

"Memorial of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, arrested with other young catechumens in Carthage under Emperor Septimius Severus; one of whom – Perpetua – was a woman of about twenty, wife of an influential man and mother of an infant; the other – Felicity – was a slave who, even in the terrible pains of premature labour (and according to the law could not be tortured while still pregnant), rejoiced at being thrown to the beasts. Both went from their prison cell to the amphitheatre with joy and serenity on their faces, as if they were already in paradise. (7 March)"

"In Mauthausen, Austria, we remember B. Marcello Callo, martyr, who, a young native of Rennes, comforted his fellow prisoners, exhausted by the gruelling labour of the work camps, with his great passion for Christ, and for this reason met his death in the extermination camp of Mauthausen. (19 March)"

"In Prague, Bohemia, we remember St. John of Nepomuk, priest and martyr, who, in order to defend the Church from King Wenceslaus IV, after enduring numerous insults and suffering all kinds of torture, was finally thrown into the Vltava River, thus completing his martyrdom for Christ. (20 March)"

"In Fiobbio di Albino, near Bergamo, Italy, commemoration of Blessed Pierina Morosini, virgin and martyr, who at the age of twenty-six, while returning home from the factory where she worked, was killed by blows to the head with stones for defending her chastity, which she had consecrated to God, from a young attacker. (6 April)"

"In Rome, memory of St. Domitilla, martyr, who, daughter of the sister of the consul Flavius Clemens, was accused of impiety during the persecution of Domitian because she had witnessed to Christ, and was therefore deported with other companions to the island of Ponza, where she had to endure a long martyrdom. (7 May)"

"In Orgosolo, Sardinia, commemoration of Blessed Antonia Mesina, virgin and martyr, devoted to prayer and works of charity, who at the age of sixteen defended her chastity until death. (17 May)"

"In Lyon, France, we remember the holy martyrs Pothinus, bishop, and Blandina of Lyon, together with forty-six companions, whose numerous and arduous trials, endured during the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, are attested to in the letter addressed by the Church of Lyon to the churches of Asia and Phrygia. Of these, Bishop Potinus, aged ninety, perished shortly after being imprisoned; some died like him in prison, while others were led into the arena in front of thousands of spectators: those who were found to be Roman citizens were beheaded, while the others were fed to the wild beasts; Finally, Blandina, her throat cut after suffering endless and increasingly cruel tortures, was finally able to join in glory those companions whom she had previously exhorted to attain the palm of martyrdom. (2 June)"

"In Seville, Spain, commemoration of the Saints Justa and Rufina, virgins, who, arrested by the governor Diogenian, had to endure various tortures before consummating their martyrdom by bearing witness to Christ: Giusta perished during her imprisonment, subjected to torture, while Rufina died by beheading. (17 July)"

"In Antioch in Pisidia (Asia Minor), commemoration of St. Marina (or Margaret), who is said to have consecrated her body to Christ in virginity and martyrdom. (20 July)"

"Memorial of SS. Sixtus II, pope, and companions. Martyrs. While Pope Sixtus was celebrating Mass and explaining divine law to his brothers, some soldiers arrived and immediately arrested and beheaded him, in accordance with the edict of Emperor Valerian, on the sixth day of August. Four deacons were also martyred with him and were buried with the pontiff in Rome, in the Cemetery of St. Callixtus on the Appian Way. On that day, Saints Agapitus and Felicissimus, his deacons, were also martyred in the Cemetery of Pretestato, where they were also buried. (7 August)"

"In Gondar, Ethiopia, commemoration of the Blessed Agatangelo de Vindocino (Francis) Nourry and Cassiano da Nantes (Gundisalvo) Vaz Lopez-Netto, priests of the Capuchin Friars Minor and martyrs, who, in Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia, attempted to reconcile separated Christians with the Catholic Church; were stoned to death after being hanged with their own Franciscan cords. (7 August)"

"Feast of St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, who, desiring to be a companion of Pope Sixtus even in martyrdom, as St. Leo the Great recalls, having been ordered to hand over the treasures of the Church, he showed the foolish tyrant the poor whom he had fed and clothed with the alms he had collected; three days after Sixtus' martyrdom, he was burned on the gridiron for his faith in Christ, and in honour of his triumph, the instruments of his torture also migrated to heaven. His body was buried in Rome at Verano, in the cemetery that would take his name. (10 August)"

"In Otranto in Puglia, remembrance of the approximately eight hundred BB. martyrs, who received the crown of martyrdom by being beheaded by the Ottoman Turks who had conquered the city: they ordered them to abandon the Christian faith, but the ‘Idruntini’, exhorted by Blessed Antonio Primaldo, an elderly weaver, to persevere in the faith of Christ, achieved the glorious palm. (14 August)"

"In Rome, in the cemetery of Callisto on the Via Appia, memory of St. Cecilia, virgin and martyr, who, as tradition has it, achieved this double palm for the love of Christ, and to whose name the ancient church of Trastevere is dedicated. (22 November)"

"Memorial of St. Lucy, virgin and martyr, who, while she lived, kept the lamp lit for her coming Bridegroom, and once she was put to death for Christ, she deserved to be married to Him, thus possessing the Light that never goes out. (13 December)"

"For centuries, the names contained in the Roman Martyrology have been the main, if not the only, source of Italian names."

"Martirologio romano, translation into Italian by Istituto San Clemente I Papa e Martire (Stefano Calvi), vatican.va."