Soyen Shaku

Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.