A human being is mistaken if he hopes to find the good outside of himself, both in this life and the next.
I have traveled the whole of the earth, searching for the guiding light. Day and night I have searched for it without rest and, at last, I heard a preacher, who revealed to me a mystery. This preacher was in my soul, and the light that I was searching for all over the world was within me.
— Sufi wisdom
We are at once our own saviors and our own destroyers. Nothing outside of a human being can harm him. If he lives according to the laws of his being, then no evil can touch him, even amid material destruction and the death of worlds.
— Lucy Mallory
Christ strives to transform the inner human being, contrary to the Pharisees, who are only concerned with the superficial. He reproaches them for having destroyed God’s commandments with their traditions. When the spirit of life leaves those who take it upon themselves to educate the people, when institutions lose their original power and grow weak, two things happen: the customs of external worship grow in size and complexity, and an imagined reality is ascribed to them by convincing people that external worship replaces real virtue and frees one from having to fulfill the real law. And then a false conscience forms among societies subjected to such ruinous teaching. Whole nations follow an abstract faith, oftentimes with great zeal, while calmly ossifying in their neglect of their most sacred duties and the debauchery that has taken over the whole of their lives. They wash their hands before consuming worldly bread and clean copper vessels, without taking care to purify their souls. The heart has been abandoned, and from the heart come in one mass the terrible sins enumerated by Jesus. Against this Jesus says: “Descend into your heart so that you can uproot all that is bad. The external does not matter. Good and evil are internal.” This is what Christ teaches. Whoever teaches otherwise does not teach the way of Christ, he is not a disciple of Christ, he abuses the name of Christ in order to deceive the people; he is one of the false prophets of whom Christ himself had spoken: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.” And further: “All those who say: ‘Lord, Lord,’ who pray with their tongue but retain evil desires will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
— Lamennais
Nothing in fate happens by chance; a human being does not meet his fate, he creates it.
— Villemain
It is you who sins, you who conceives evil, you who flees from sin, you who purifies your thoughts, you who is sinful or pure, no one else can save you.
— The Dhammapada
Your body is a city, full of good and evil. You are the sultan, and your reason is your grand vizier.
— Saif Muluk
The happiness and misery of the human being does not lie in possessions and gold; happiness and misery lies in his soul.
The good human being is not the one who does not commit injustice, but the one who does not feel the slightest desire to do it.
A wise human being feels himself at home in every country; the universe is a good soul’s homeland.
— Democritus
Nothing weakens a human being as much as the hope that something other than his own effort can help him find salvation and the good.
