“Unpleasant behavior is sick behavior. Few people want to think about this fact, but you will do so. From now on you will see that unpleasant people are sick people. You know the thousand varieties of unpleasantness, including sarcastic accusations, delirious demands, repulsive self-worship, a cold and hostile face. If your behavior is unpleasant, you must see that you have chosen midnight over noon and see that you will stumble and fall in your own darkness. If another person is unpleasant, realize that your wish for sunlight must have nothing to do with his darkness.”

“The truly positive makes a negative mind scowl.
The falsely positive makes a negative mind smile.”

“You are trying to reach the place where you can say,
‘No one can hurt me now.’ Trying to reach it prevents you from reaching it.”

   “Take one instance of a depressed, forlorn, heavy-spirited state and track it back to its origin in some thought or comment. Thought-watching is absolutely necessary for you to catch thoughts and comments passing through your mind — false elation, gloom, etc. No matter what you’re doing, be a thought watcher. Watch your thoughts until they dissolve, and watch your life and mind become new and fresh.”

“Badness is an admission of failure. Think about this all day.”

“Gloom is passive instability; insolence is active instability.”

“If you did not take pleasure in anger, you would not be angry about anything. There is a great sick pleasure and ego excitement in the thrill of hating or any other negative emotion.”

   “Know that distress and disappointment are states of stupidity and nothing else. Do not trust them. They have no intelligence whatever in them; they can only lead you astray. You are very foolish in being lured after their frantic shrieks. They shout that they are right, but they are always wrong and wrong for you personally. Do not follow the deceitful lures of distress and disappointment.”

   “Suffering always runs along the track of mechanical thought, so by permitting consciousness to interrupt mechanical thought, we learn the secret for ending suffering.”

“Conscious evaluation is NOT the same as criticism.”

“Cowards crave crazy crowds.”

   “If you let others carry a lamp for you, they may lag or rush ahead, but carry your own lamp and it is impossible to ever be out of the light.”

   “Sooner or later, for the first time, you will catch a glimpse of that Something Else you somehow sensed just had to exist out there.”

   “Do not turn against yourself, no matter how badly you may have blundered in the past, for blundering exists only in man-made time, and your true nature does not live in time, but in the present.”

   “Here is a fundamental truth. Your free nature — your essence — your kingdom within — use any name you want — is free from all problems, from all anxieties, from all tensions, from all nervousness, from all groping around in the dark as to what life is all about. Your original nature is a totally free element. It has no problems at all! This is Truth. This is reality. This is what God is — and God cannot have any problems at all. When we are unified with this state, when we have come back home to it, we are free human beings.”