55 Path Quotes

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

I march to a different drummer, whose location, identity, and musical training haven't yet been established.

My life is about my journey, and your life is about your journey. You are completely unqualified to draw my map, and I am completely unqualified to draw yours. I hope you'll let me know all about the path you've found, so that I may judge it for myself against my own path, and have the freedom to choose between the two. But please don't try and drag me from my path on to yours, and I will be sure to return the favor.

The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

And o'er the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Thro' all the world she follow'd him.

As lines, so loves oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet; But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet.

Alas! It is well written, 'The road to eminence lies through the cheap and exceedingly uninviting eating-houses.'

Every man has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

I always wanted to be some kind of writer or newspaper reporter. But after college... I did other things.

My father once said, 'If the whole world wants to go left and you feel like going right, go right. You don't have to follow. You don't have to make a big deal about which way you're going. Just go. It's very easy.

Easy is right. Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy and you are right. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that the going is easy.

Thus hand in hand through life we'll go; Its checker'd paths of joy and woe With cautious steps we 'll tread.

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possiblity.

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

As Jerry Seinfeld once said, 'Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.' But I have often wanted to take the road less traveled simply because it was.

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked upon.

We hang on to every line, And walk straight down the middle of it.

Attunement could occur through any of the great religions, but would be tied exclusively to none of them. A person could be attuned to an 'integral spirituality' while still be a practicing Christian, Buddhist, New-Age advocate, or Neopagan. This would be something added to one's religion, not subtracted from it. The only thing it would subtract (and there's no way around this) is the belief that one's own path is the only true path to salvation.

Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have found the soul walking upon my path.' For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

You ask a faith, - they are content with faith; You ask to have, - but they reply 'IT hath.' There is no end, there need be no path.

Which of the two eternal roads shall I choose? Suddenly I know that my whole life hangs on this decision - the life of the entire Universe. Of the two, I choose the ascending path. Why? For no intelligible reason, without any certainty; I know how ineffectual the mind and all the small certainties of man can be in this moment of crisis. I choose the ascending path because my heart drives me toward it. 'Upward! Upward! Upward!' my heart shouts, and I follow it trustingly.

High up where the poor sat, the people quaked with fear: they saw the soul stretched on the ground, a votive beast beaten by the conflicting powers of light and dark, and their minds shook, nor knew now what great god to choose, for comfort's road dropped to the right, the rough ascent rose to the left, and both roads seemed to lead to God, while at the crossroads stood the human heart, and swayed.

We shall not meet again: over the wave Our ways divide, and yours is straight and endless - But mine is short and crooked to the grave: Yet what of these dark crowds, amid whose flow I battle like a rock, aloof and friendless - Are not their generations, vague and endless, The waves, the strides, the feet on which I go?

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

I swear, if they hadn't tried to ruin me, I never would have ended up being a rapper. I probably would have been a preacher or something.

And stepping westward seemed to be A kind of heavenly destiny.

What can a human being do-what can you and I do-to create a completely different society? We are asking ourselves a very serious question. Is there anything to be done at all? What can we do? Will somebody tell us? People have told us. The so-called spiritual leaders, who are supposed to understand these things better than we do, have told us by trying to twist and mould us into a new pattern, and that hasn't led us very far; sophisticated and learned men have told us and that has led us no further. We have been told that all paths lead to truth-you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door-which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to-then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are-your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears.

Let me start with a short and simple list. This is not the last word on the topic, but the first word, a simple list of suggestions to get the conversation going. Most of the great wisdom traditions agree that: 1. Spirit, by whatever name, exists. 2. Spirit, although existing 'out there,' is found 'in here,' or revealed within to the open heart and mind. 3. Most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, or duality - that is, we are living in a fallen, illusory, or fragmented state. 4. There is a way out of this fallen state (of sin or illusion or disharmony), there is a Path to our liberation. 5. If we follow this Path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within and without, a Supreme Liberation, which 6. marks the end of sin and suffering, and 7. manifests in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings. Does a list something like that make sense to you? Because if there are these general spiritual patterns in the cosmos, at least wherever human beings appear, then this changes everything. You can be a practicing Christian and still agree with that list; you can be a practicing Neopagan and still agree with that list.

In a day when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are traveling in the wrong path

Now we was once two niggaz of the same kind/Quick to holla at a hoochie with the same line/You was just a little smaller but you still rolled/Got stretched to Y.A. and hit the hood swoll

Fear not the path of truth, for the lack of people walking on it.

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask: 'Does this path have a heart?'

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go.

'Any road', said Carlyle, 'even this road to Entepfuhl, will take you to the end of the world'. But the Entepfuhl road, if taken in its entirety, and to the end, goes back to Entepfuhl; so Entepfuhl, where we already were, is that very end of the world we were seeking.

OK. You go Uruguay and I'll go mine!

Sometimes the path you're on is not as important as the direction you're heading.

'The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick,' said the Witch, 'so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you'.

She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.[6]

The easy, gentle, and sloping path...is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern.

Sometimes I wore a fringe so deep it obscured the way ahead. This hardly mattered. There were always others to look where I was going.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

After West Point and the priesthood, LSD must have seemed downright logical.