Great Throughts Treasury

"You best serve God with all of your heart. God’s real nature is happiness. Serve Him by expressing joyousness, and your reward is the awakening that your joy is His."

"Words may point the way to Truth, but actions demonstrate it. Live in accordance with the highest awareness of the Truth that you know. There is no greater purpose in life than this one."

"We can create lovely and loving people around us just by tuning into the qualities that we would like to enjoy in them."

"Trust frees you to see the wisdom of the moment. The goodness of life is invincible, and in Justice is your assurance of success. The laws of consciousness work consistently for your highest good. They offer you consolation and guidance. You now embody the choice to earn your goal, which is at hand."

"Those who follow the heart discover Truth."

"This sharpening of skills is the real value of competition. Many have lost sight of the purpose of healthy competition, which helps us to draw forth inner strength and encourages us to transcend our ideas of personal limitation. The real competition, however, is within the person, and not between people... In essence, competition is cooperation."

"There are an infinite number of ways to serve. Each of the ways is equally important... No matter what our personal path to God, service is always a necessary step on the path."

"The path of purposeful action bears a double blessing for those who walk it: in the blessing of the world is your own. Right action is the key to the re-establishment of God consciousness within your world... Let your deeds speak your message to the world. Your actions have the power to heal. This is a responsibility of great and wonderful magnitude. It is your responsibility, and it is the easiest one, for when you choose the responsibility to heal the world, you instantly allow God to heal the world through you."

"Routines cannot bind us unless we believe in them. Patterns were given to serve us - not for us to live for them."

"Real growth comes only through self-acceptance. AS long as we deny any aspect of our being, we make believe that something could be outside of God. It is as if we say, “God is everywhere; He fills all time and space - except for this part of my body and what I did at age fifteen.”"

"To love ourselves for our goodness is easy. To love ourselves in spite of our errors is downright Holy."

"Quiet and unacclaimed acts are, to me, the real margin of greatness. Greatness is not in popularity, wealth, or long life, as most people believe. Real greatness is in simplicity and supportive words. It is in firm encouragement and gentle patience. It is in finding god in the midst of the turmoil of the marketplace, and remembering His goodness during hardship. No, greatness is not always found in those whom the world calls its heroes, but in the unheard of saints who unselfishly serve their families, lend a kind ear to a friend in despair, and lovingly see the Best in those who have become too accustomed to seeing themselves as mediocre."

"It is only when we hold people and things lightly that we can enjoy them fully. Life is a constant flow of coming and going. Things and people come into our lives and they leave, just as sure as they came... Our key to happiness is to enjoy a relationship while it lasts, allowing the person and the relationship complete freedom to evolve in the highest way for them... Let go and let God."

"If you want to bring a difficult relationship into the light of love, make up your mind to change your image of who both of you are."

"If we want to see how we got to be where we are in life, we need only to trace our experience back to our thoughts."

"Harmonious living tells of harmonious thinking. A turbulent life reveals some kind of inner turmoil or lack of resolution... Outer events are simply the skin and bones of inner thoughts, and to really take control of our lives, we must treat them as one. Concentrate on that which you would become, not that which you now believe you are, and you will enter a new realm of consciousness - one of chosen good."

"Do not invest your happiness in the outside world, which is constantly changing and can never bring you real peace. Why not place your happiness in God, the unchanging, Who will never let you down?"

"Discern between the truth that is spoken and Truth that is lived. Never surrender your soul to another person, but always align it with God."

"Destiny is consistently in our own hands. We did not create the choices, but we certainly have the power to exercise them. We did not make God, but we certainly know Him. We did not make Love, but we can certainly become it."

"Anyone in a state of seeking can never be happy. Only those who are constantly finding are fulfilled. And finding is not something that happens to us - it is something we do."

"All acts of charity or giving are valuable only inasmuch as they recognize the true dignity of those toward whom the contribution is directed. Any money or time given to another without recognizing their full equality, is as chaff in the wind, and serves only the mockery of the ego. Pity or sorrow is never a worthy reason for charity, for it only reinforces the bondage of the giver and the recipient. Real charity is never a giving, but always a sharing. He who gives as a giver remains half; he who shares, knows wholeness."

"Adversity is our dear friend. It is the driving force that pushes us out of our comfortable nest and forces us to learn to fly on our own. We can really welcome adversity as a gift. Without it our growth is very slow."

"A true teacher encourages students to find God within themselves, and does not foster clinging or dependence on the physical form... The only goal of a true teacher is the advancement of the students and the celebration of Truth. Selfish or personal motivations are absent."

"Despite all the questions raised by our meandering minds, we are in our right place, doing exactly what we need to be doing, at exactly the right time. Because life is a school, we are always I the class that we have chosen to learn the lessons we need to master. Sometimes it is fun, and sometimes we have to work at it a bit, but it is always appropriate."

"Every thought is a prayer. Every thought that we think is like an order that we place with God, who is prepared to give us all that we ask for in the form of our thoughts. The more we dwell on any thought, the more likely we are to see that thought manifested in our experience."

"God is to be found in silence, but She is also knowable while giving the kids lunch, negotiating for a higher salary, and cleaning the bathtub."

"It is time for you to understand the purpose of your life. You are a chalice for God’s Love and a vehicle for Him to bless the world. Realize your Divine purpose and your will is aligned with His. Goodness is the theme of all life. See the Perfection in your life and you recapture your Childhood Vision. As you give up patterns of evaluation and cynicism, you accept the benevolence of God. Pain is born of resistance, and joy is a function of the acceptance of God’s whole and Holy Love for you. Find purpose in your joy, and you find purpose in God."

"No man can serve peace while living in discord. And no man can sustain chaos if he is absorbed in harmony."

"Now is our only moment to live."

"Our freedom depends on our willingness to see Perfection. The imperfection that we have been taught to see has led only to suffering... Perfection is not a standard to be achieved, but a truth to be acknowledged. It is not the difference between us and God, but the hallmark of our unity with Him. And the honoring of Perfection is not a sin of vanity, but the humble acceptance of our identity as offspring of the Eternal."

"Pray with your feet moving."

"Suffering is born of wrong thinking. The root of pain is error in perception . There can be no error in Truth, only errors in the perception of Truth. If you yearn to end human suffering, know, then, what is Real, for this Knowledge is the only source of invincible faith."

"The aspect of human beings that sets us off from all other creatures is that of imaginative wisdom. Animals see things as they are, but we see them as they can be."

"The big lie of life is that we are unaware of what hurts and what heals, and the great Truth is that we are all basically the same."

"The mind could never mar one iota of Truth. The Truth is eternal, and it is not in any way assailable. Our perception of Truth is, however, vulnerable, and it is too easily distorted by the web of ignorance, spun by the crafty spider of the rational mind. In order to know the Truth, we must learn to recognize a Source other than facts."

"The reality of thoughts and the power they have to create and to change the world brings with it a supremely important realization: We can bless and we can heal."

"The reward of the adventure of life is freedom. The irony of the adventure is that we were free before we set out, but we needed to learn that freedom was not to be found where we fantasized it to be. We needed to learn, like our old friend Dorothy from Kansas, that there’s no place like home, because there is no place but Home. When we learn that God is everywhere, that Love fills all space, and that Truth is the very Ground of our Being, we may surely release the little to embrace the All."

"The Whole Truth is fathomless, ever free of containment, confinement, or conformity... No teacher, religion, or cult can hold exclusive possession of the Truth. The hallmark of Truth is its inclusive nature; no one or no thing could ever be excluded from It."

"Ultimately there is but one decision that you need to make: the decision for God. All other decisions are in service of this one."

"We have no power to make anything more Holy than it already is. Everything is already blessed, and all the prayers in the world could not make it more blessed."

"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity."

"We too often mistake the form of an experience for its essence. We worship the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and not the Spirit itself."

"You are privileged to participate in the transformation of consciousness on the planet earth. This is the most cherishable and glorious destiny of all."

"Our major impact in transforming society comes from integrating a concern for the community into as many of our day-to-day business decisions and transactions as possible. This means buying from suppliers with a social mission, using ingredients that contribute to a sustainable world, and investing funds and human resources in ways that benefit the community."

"To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny."