Quotes
Words of wisdom from every horizon
A living collection of spiritual and philosophical quotations from every horizon, enriched over time by the author and his readers.
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Quotations is a living space where I unfold not a fixed anthology, but a collection in movement, nourished over time by the words that have mattered to me first, and to you, if you so wish.
Here you will find quotations drawn from the great spiritual and philosophical traditions of humanity, as well as from thinkers, poets and witnesses who belong to no school, but who have known how to put the right words to what existence teaches us. No tradition is privileged here; all are welcomed with equal dignity, out of a concern for balance that reflects the diversity of paths towards the essential.
Substack does not, technically, allow this page to be directly edited by my subscribers. I therefore invite you to submit your quotations to me by email at dialoguesen@jnd.mailer.me: please give the exact text of the quotation, its author and source if you know it, and, if you feel moved to do so, a few words about what that saying has meant or still means to you. This last element is not required, but it is precious.
Selected contributions will be incorporated into this page by my own hand, in order to preserve its coherence and the balance between traditions. Not every contribution will necessarily find its place here, but each will be read with care.
This collection is thus, in a sense, ours.
Jérôme Nathanaël
Navigation:
Orient
Occident
Contemporary voices
Hindu spirituality
“O Fire, thou art the son of Heaven through the body of the Earth.”
— Rig-Veda, III.25.1
“Speak the truth. Practise righteousness. Do not swerve from the truth, not even inadvertently.”
— Taittirīya Upaniṣad, chap. I, lesson 11, sect. 1–4
“It moves, and it moves not; it is far, and it is near; it is within all things, and it is beyond all things.”
— Īśā Upaniṣad, verse 5
“Thou hast the right to act, but never to lay claim to the fruits of thine actions. Let not the fruit of action be thy motive; yet neither surrender thyself to inaction.”
— Bhagavad-Gītā, II, 47
“As the ocean receives all rivers without being disturbed, so the sage receives all pleasures without being moved by them.”
— Bhagavad-Gītā, II, 70
Buddhist spirituality
“Mind is the forerunner of all mental states. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never departs.”
— Dhammapada, verse 1
“As a great rock is not shaken by the storm, so the wise man is unmoved by praise or blame.”
— Dhammapada, verse 81
“One is not wise because one speaks at length. He who is peaceful, friendly and fearless is the true sage.”
— Dhammapada, verse 258
“Be a refuge unto yourselves. Be a light unto yourselves.”
— Dhammapada / Words of the dying Buddha
“The sage must dwell among men as the bee that, without disturbing the colour or fragrance of the flowers, flies off bearing their nectar.”
— Dhammapada, verse 49
Taoist spirituality
“I have but three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are thy greatest treasures.”
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 67
“In dwelling, live close to the ground. In meditation, plunge into the heart of things.”
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 8
“In the pursuit of knowledge, something is added every day. In the practice of the Tao, something is shed every day.”
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 48
“The greatest tree is born of a tiny seed.”
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 64
“He who knows himself is enlightened; he who masters himself is strong.”
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 33
Jewish spirituality
“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be lifted up? And if thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door.”
— Torah, Genesis, 4:7
“Keep my statutes and observe them: I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”
— Torah, Leviticus, 20:8
“In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
— Talmud, Pirkei Avot, 2:6
“Who is rich? He who is content with his portion.”
— Talmud, Pirkei Avot, 4:1
“The righteous man is the foundation of the world.”
— Proverbs, 10:25
Christian spirituality
“People think too much about what they must do, and too little about what they must be.”
— Meister Eckhart, Spiritual Instructions
“The goods of this world neither occupy the soul nor harm it, since they do not penetrate into it. What harms it is the attachment to those goods and the desire it harbours for them.”
— John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 3
“What would a man gain by sailing to the moon, if he is incapable of crossing the abyss that separates him from himself?”
— Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert
“It is not in the way a man speaks of G.d, but in the way he speaks of earthly things, that one can best discern whether his soul has dwelt in the fire of the love of G.d.”
— Simone Weil, Waiting on God
Islamic spirituality
“He grants wisdom to whom He wills. And he to whom wisdom is granted has indeed been given a great good. But none take heed save those endowed with understanding.”
— Quran, Surah al-Baqarah (2:269)
“I seek refuge with the Lord of the breaking dawn, against the evil of what He has created.”
— Quran, Surah al-Falaq (113:1–2)
“Seek knowledge, even unto China.”
— Hadith attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad (cited in classical collections)
“He whom thou seekest seeks thee also.”
— Rumi, Masnavi, Book III
Shamanism
“From Wakan-Tanka, the medicine man draws wisdom and power. He knows that all plants, all animals and all men come from a single source.”
— Lakota shamanic tradition, oral transmission
“The Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth.”
— Saying attributed to Chief Seattle, 1854, oral transmission
“A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.”
— Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan
Contemporary voices
Etty Hillesum (1914–1943)
Etty Hillesum was a young Dutch Jewish woman whose diary, written in Amsterdam between 1941 and 1943 under the Nazi Occupation, stands as one of the most profoundly moving spiritual testimonies of the twentieth century. She died at Auschwitz on 30 November 1943, at the age of twenty-nine.
“Our only moral obligation is to open up within ourselves vast clearings of peace and to extend them little by little, until that peace radiates outwards towards others. And the more peace there is in beings, the more there will also be in this seething world.”
— Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
“Life and death, suffering and joy, the blisters on aching feet, the jasmine behind the house, the persecutions, the countless atrocities: everything, everything is within me and forms a powerful whole; I accept it as an indivisible totality.”
— Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
“A steadily firmer certainty that one must never expect from others any help, support or refuge, ever. Others are as uncertain, as weak, as bereft as oneself.”
— Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
Henri Le Saux (Swāmī Abhishiktānanda) (1910–1973)
Born in Brittany, Henri Le Saux spent the last twenty-five years of his life in India, where his encounter with Ramana Maharshi at the foot of the sacred mountain of Arunāchala wrought in him a radical transformation. There he explored the possibility of a non-duality lived from within, at the crossroads of Christianity and Hinduism, leaving behind a theological and mystical work of exceptional depth.
“It is not with an abstract and distant God that I wish to converse, but with the one God whose eternity is wholly present in every moment of my existence, in my very own present. In truth, I am always with him and in him, in a contact more intimate than any imagination could represent to me. The one thing needful is that I myself awaken to this Presence.”
— Henri Le Saux, Awakening to Oneself, Awakening to God: An Essay on Prayer
“Ramana’s advaita is my birthplace. Mūlagarbha [the primordial matrix]. Against this all reasoning breaks. And I have always hesitated to take the decisive step where I have always sensed that final peace and joy would be found.”
— Henri Le Saux, The Ascent to the Depths of the Heart: An Intimate Journal
Christiane Singer (1943–2007)
Born in Marseilles, raised in Vienna, Christiane Singer is one of the most incandescent spiritual voices of the French language. Philosopher, storyteller and mystic, she wove throughout her life a body of work at the crossroads of love, shadow and the sacred. Her last book, dictated from the sickbed that was to carry her away, stands as one of the most luminous spiritual testaments of the twentieth century.
“When there is nothing left, there is only Love. There is nothing but Love. [...] Love is not a sentiment. It is the very substance of creation.”
— Christiane Singer, Last Fragments of a Long Journey
“Only he who has dared to see that hell is within him will discover there the buried heaven. It is the work upon the shadow, the crossing of the night, that allows the rising of the dawn.”
— Christiane Singer, Last Fragments of a Long Journey
“The true adventure of life, the clear and high challenge, is not to flee commitment but to dare it. Free is not he who refuses to commit himself.”
— Christiane Singer, In Praise of Marriage, Commitment and Other Follies
Dialogues with the Angel – Gitta Mallasz, 1943–1944
Gitta Mallasz was a Hungarian artist, graphic designer, swimming champion and a woman of strong character, when, on 25 June 1943, in a small village at the gates of a Budapest encircled by war, something unforeseen broke into her working sessions with her friends Hanna, Lili and Joseph: Hanna ceased to speak in her own name and transmitted, for seventeen months, an angelic teaching of staggering density, which Gitta set down in small black notebooks that became Dialogues with the Angel. Her three friends, all Jewish, were deported and did not return from the camps; Gitta, alone, passed through decades of silence and exile before publishing this text in France in 1976, where it had the effect of an underground revelation, and before becoming, until her death, its tireless messenger.
“In the beginning was the Silence. From the womb of Silence was born the Sound. The Sound is Love. The Sound is the Son of the Lord. The Lord is the Silence.”
— Dialogues with the Angel, p. 379, Aubier ed., 1990
“EVIL IS GOOD IN THE MAKING, BUT NOT YET READY.”
— Dialogues with the Angel, p. 173, Aubier ed.
“Your path is not to improve, to amend. Your path is what has not yet existed: Creation by the Sacred Force, Force that comes from God, that returns to God, in the joy of intoxication: Divine Circulation.”
— Dialogues with the Angel, p. 360, Aubier ed.
The Sign, or Revelation of Arès – Michel Potay, 1929–2025
Michel Potay, known as Brother Michel, is the witness of a twofold supernatural apparition that occurred in the village of Arès, in the Gironde: first in 1974, through the voice of Christ, then in 1977, directly from the Creator; events whose text he set down under the title The Revelation of Arès. A trained engineer and then an Orthodox priest, he left his church to devote the entire second half of his life to this extraordinary testimony, gathering naturally around him the movement of the Pilgrims of Arès: not a religion, but a community of free consciences, without dogmas or hierarchy, united by the conviction that the world must change little by little through the joyful penitence of each man.
“The Truth is, the world has to change; I did not say anything else to My Witnesses.”
— The Sign, 28/7
“You are the sword; the sword is not the Arm that raises it.”
— The Sign, 35/14
“Let your lips never utter any judgement on anyone.”
— The Sign, 16/14
“The clearer of conceited sciences you will make your head under My Breath, in the Spirit’s brightness, the more discernible My Marvels will be to you.”
— The Sign, 33/8
“All My people are princes, all of them prevail over death and hell when they live up to My Word.”
— The Sign, 3/9
© 2026 – Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël
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