“Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.”

The Way to Love (1995)
Context: To find the kingdom is the easiest thing in the world but also the most difficult. Easy because it is all around you and within you, and all you have to do is reach out and take possession of it. Difficult because if you wish to possess the kingdom you may possess nothing else. That is, you must drop all inward leaning on any person or thing, withdrawing from them forever the power to thrill you, or excite you, or to give you a feeling of security or well-being. For this, you first need to see with unflinching clarity this simple and shattering truth: Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing, but absolutely nothing can make you happy. The moment you see that, you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend to another, one place, one spiritual technique, one guru to another. None of these things can give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary thrill, a pleasure that initially grows in intesity, then turns into pain if you lose them and into boredom if you keep them.

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

" Time, Self and Sleeping Beauty https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282052756_Time_Self_and_Sleeping_Beauty" (2008), p. 44

Source: The Alchemist

Pearls of Wisdom

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: Do not imagine that it is less an accident by which you find yourself master of the wealth which you possess, than that by which this man found himself king.

Attributed to Diane Sawyer in: R.J. Ackerman (1995) Before It's Too Late. p. 95