Autobiographers

"Mentally speaking, it sucks, man. Who wants to prepare their whole life and have it all taken away by some guy who just made a bad pass? But that's the beauty of the sport as well. Anything can happen."

"To be able to come out of that mess as I did is special. To be able to improve my relations with my dad is special. I'm happy with the way my life's going, the way I'm growing up as a person. Skating has changed me. I've had a lot of chances, and this is my time to shine."

"I also love a quiet place That's green, away from all mankind; A lonely pool, and let a tree Sigh with her bosom over me."

"Go you and, with such glorious hues, Live with proud peacocks in green parks."

"What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare."

"People are not to be blamed for their doubts, but that they make no effort to arrive at the truth."

"Cats — by day the most docile of God's creatures, everyone of them in the night enlisting under the devil's banner — took the place by storm after the human voice had ceased."

"It was the Rainbow gave thee birth, And left thee all her lovely hues."

"No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance."

"Let us not judge life by its number of breaths, but by the number of times that breath is held, or lost, either under a deep emotion caused by love, or when we stand before an object of interest or beauty."

"What sweet, what happy days had I, When dreams made Time Eternity!"

"This man has talent, that man genius, And here's the strange and cruel difference: Talent gives pence and his reward is gold, Genius gives gold and gets no more than pence."

"Thou shalt not laugh, thou shalt not romp, Let's grimly kiss with bated breath; As quietly and solemnly As Life when it is kissing Death."

"The collier's wife had four tall sons Brought from the pit's mouth dead, And crushed from foot to head"

"From my own kind I only learn How foolish comfort is"

"What a glorious time of the year is this [Spring]! With the warm sun travelling through serene skies, the air clear and fresh above you, which instils new blood in the body, making one defiantly tramp the earth, kicking the snows aside in the scorn of action."

"this extraordinary and memorable being, who, for all his humility, bore about him something of the primitive splendour and directness of the Elizabethan age"

"Autumn grows old: he, like some simple one, In Summer's castaway is strangely clad"

"They sniffed, poor things, for their green fields, They cried so loud I could not sleep: For fifty thousand shillings down I would not sail again with sheep."

"Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content, Thou knowest of no strange continent; Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep A gentle motion with the deep; Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas, Where scent comes forth in every breeze."

"As a Magician, I try to show things to people that seem impossible. And I think magic whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards is pretty simple: It's practice, it's training and it's experimenting while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be. And that's what magic is to me."

"Magic is not about having a puzzle to solve. It's about creating a moment of awe and astonishment. And that can be a beautiful thing"

"Yogananda draws parallels between the Christian trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the yoga concept of Sat, Tat and Aum. Both traditions use the trinity to distinguish among the transcendent, divine reality; its immanence in creation; and a sacred, cosmic vibration that sustains the universe, he says.And he asserts that Bible passages used to exclude non-Christians from salvation have been misconstrued. Some Christians believe, for instance, that Jesus' saying that "no one comes to the Father except through me" requires a belief in Jesus the man as God and personal savior. Yogananda, however, asserts that Jesus was referring to the need to achieve the same "Christ consciousness" he personified as a way to achieve oneness with God."Christ has been much misinterpreted by the world," Yogananda wrote. "Even the most elementary principles of his teachings have been desecrated, and their esoteric depths have been forgotten.""

"The heart of the great dispensation of Jesus has survived not necessarily in any temporal power of an outer institution, but in those great devotees and saints whose protracted devotions and meditations established within them temples of Christ Consciousness and God-communion... It is such saints and masters who have actually communed with God — those known to history as well as countless anonymous true souls devoted to Christ, hidden in monasteries and convents in wholehearted consecration — who have verily been the "rock" on which Jesus' inner church of Christ communion has endured these two thousand years."

"The Autobiography of a Yogi [is a] guide to meditation and spirituality that [Steve Jobs] had first read as a teenager, then reread in India, and had read once a year ever since."

"Christ has been much misinterpreted by the world. Even the most elementary principles of his teachings have been desecrated, and their esoteric depths have been forgotten. They have been crucified at the hands of dogma, prejudice, and cramped understanding. Genocidal wars have been fought, people have been burned as witches and heretics, on the presumed authority of man-made doctrines of Christianity. How to salvage the immortal teachings from the hands of ignorance? We must know Jesus as an Oriental Christ, a supreme yogi who manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-union, and thus could speak and act as a savior with the voice and authority of God."

"How do the receptive perceive truth, whereas the unreceptive "seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand"? The ultimate truths of heaven and the kingdom of God, the reality that lies behind sensory perception and beyond the cogitations of the rationalizing mind, can only be grasped by intuition — awakening the intuitive knowing, the pure comprehension, of the soul."

"Divine incarnations do not come to bring a new or exclusive religion, but to restore the One Religion of God-realization. Many are the churches and temples founded in his name, often prosperous and powerful, but where is the communion that he stressed — actual contact with God? Jesus wants temples to be established in human souls, first and foremost; then established outwardly in physical places of worship. Instead, there are countless huge edifices with vast congregations being indoctrinated in churchianity, but few souls who are really in touch with Christ through deep prayer and meditation."

"These teachings have been sent to explain the truth as Jesus intended it to be known in the world — not to give a new Christianity, but to give the real Christ-teaching: how to become like Christ, how to resurrect the Eternal Christ within one's Self..."

"It is an erroneous assumption of limited minds that great ones such as Jesus, Krishna, and other divine incarnations are gone from the earth when they are no longer visible to human sight. This is not so... Jesus Christ is very much alive and active today. In Spirit and occasionally taking on a flesh-and-blood form, he is working unseen by the masses for the regeneration of the world. With his all-embracing love, Jesus is not content merely to enjoy his blissful consciousness in Heaven. He is deeply concerned for mankind and wishes to give his followers the means to attain the divine freedom of entry into God's Infinite Kingdom...."

"Many sects, many denominations, many beliefs, many persecutions, many conflicts and upheavals have been created by misinterpretations. Now, Christ reveals the consummate message in the simple words he spoke to an ancient people in a less-advanced age of civilization. Read, understand, and feel Christ speaking to you through this "Second Coming" bible, urging you to be redeemed by realization of the true "Second Coming," the resurrection within you of the Infinite Christ Consciousness."

"The lack of individual prayer and communion with God has divorced modern Christians and Christian sects from Jesus' teaching of the real perception of God, as is true also of all religious paths inaugurated by God-sent prophets whose followers drift into byways of dogma and ritual rather than actual God-communion. Those paths that have no esoteric soul-lifting training busy themselves with dogma and building walls to exclude people with different ideas. Divine persons who really perceive God include everybody within the path of their love, not in the concept of an eclectic congregation but in respectful divine friendship toward all true lovers of God and the saints of all religions."

"Brotherhood is an ideal better understood by example than precept!"

""Father, there is little to tell." She (Sri Anandamoyi Ma) spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. "My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father, 'I was the same.' As a little girl, 'I was the same.' I grew into womanhood, but still 'I was the same.' When the family in which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, 'I was the same... And, Father, in front of you now, 'I am the same.' Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change[s] around me in the hall of eternity, 'I shall be the same.'"

""World is a large term, but man must enlarge his allegiance, considering himself in the light of a world citizen," I continued "A person who truly feels: 'The world is my homeland; it is my America, my India, my Philippines, my England, my Africa,' will never lack scope for a useful and happy life. His natural local pride will know limitless expansion; he will be in touch with creative universal currents."

"Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles, the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle."

"If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, he would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things — solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria — as forms of consciousness, just as a man can close his eyes and realize that he exists, even though his body is invisible to his physical eyes and is present only as an idea."

"Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation. 'A beggar cannot renounce wealth,' Master would say. 'If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!' Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole."

"The Body melts into the universe The universe melts into the soundless voice The sound melts into the all-shining light And the light enters the bosom of infinite joy."

"In waking, eating, working, dreaming, sleeping, Serving, meditating, chanting, divinely loving, My soul constantly hums, unheard by any: God, God, God!"

"Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization, will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man's personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father."

"The life of Lord Krishna has been misunderstood by many Western commentators. Scriptural allegory is baffling to literal minds. A hilarious blunder by a translator will illustrate this point. The story concerns an inspired medieval saint, the cobbler Ravidas, who sang in the simple terms of his own trade of the spiritual glory hidden in all mankind: Under the vast vault of blue Lives the divinity clothed in hide. One turns aside to hide a smile on hearing the pedestrian interpretation given to Ravidas' poem by a Western writer: He afterwards built a hut, set up in it an idol which he made from a hide, and applied himself to its worship."

"I remained alone with the yogi until his disciples arrived in the evening. Bhaduri Mahasaya entered one of his inimitable discourses. Like a peaceful flood, he swept away the mental debris of his listeners, floating them Godward."

"In wrath I strike, and set the dark ablaze With the immortal spark of thought, By friction-process brought Of concentration And distraction. The darkness burns With a million tongues; And now I spy All past, all distant things, as nigh."

"If anyone observed the unpretentious master and myself as we walked away from the crowded pavement, the onlooker surely suspected us of intoxication. I felt that the falling shades of evening were sympathetically drunk with God. When darkness recovered from its nightly swoon, I faced the new morning bereft of my ecstatic mood, but ever enshrined in memory is the seraphic son of Divine Mother—Master Mahasaya!"

"His interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures testify to the depth of Sri Yukteswarji's command of the philosophy, both Eastern and Western, and remain as an eye-opener for the unity between Orient and Occident. As he believed in the unity of all religious faiths, Sri Yukteswar Maharaj established Sadhu Sabha (Society of Saints) with the cooperation of leaders of various sects and faiths, for the inculcation of a scientific spirit in religion."

"In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth. He came two thousand years ago and, after imparting a universal path to God's kingdom, was crucified and resurrected; his reappearance to the masses now is not necessary for the fulfillment of his teachings. What is necessary is for the cosmic wisdom and divine perception of Jesus to speak again through each one's own experience and understanding of the infinite Christ Consciousness that was incarnate in Jesus. That will be his true Second Coming."

"It is the call of the beauty — robed ones To worship the great Beauty. It is the call of God Through silent intelligences And starburst of feelings."

"To gaze with looks of wonderment, And to serve all that lives, still or moving. This is to know what love is. He knows who lives it."

"Love is the Heaven Toward which the flowers, rivers, nations, atoms, creatures — you and I Are rushing by the straight path of action right, Or winding laboriously on error’s path, All to reach haven there at last."