
“Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.”
Source: Complete Works
The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Everything is possible: everything. Listen. I am old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I remember Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: that the burden of renewing life was past bearing: that it was too much for one. And when she cast the skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two: one like herself, the other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the other.
“Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.”
Source: Complete Works
“In my world, everything is possible and everything is relative.”
Source: The Zahir (2005), p. 167.
“Everything that is possible demands to exist.”
Omne possibile exigit existere.
De veritatibus primis (1686)
“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.”
Variant: Because you are alive, everything is possible.
Source: Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers
“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”
“To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.”
“Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.
Siddhartha (1922)
Context: Listen my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this "someday" is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on his way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exits in robber and the dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.
“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
Variant: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.