All the knowledge I possess everyone can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

- Goethe

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

- Carl Jung

Never throw anyone out of your heart.  People, more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed.

- Eb & Deb Shapiro

quote from The Eloquence of Living, by Vimala Thakar

Only human beings living in freedom can create a new society, a new dimension of consciousness in which the tenderness of love and compassion can flower in each human heart.

The Eloquence of Living: Meeting Life With Freshness, Fearlessness, and Compassion

from the Mundaka Upanishads

Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings,
vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle,
unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.
Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue
utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind,
grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.
He who finds it is free; he has found himself;
he has solved the great riddle; his heart is forever at peace.
Whole, he enters the Whole.  His personal self
returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source.
As rivers lose name and form when they disappear
into the sea, the sage leaves behind all traces
when he disappears into the light.  Perceiving the truth,
he becomes the truth; he passes beyond all suffering,
beyond death; all the knots of his heart are loosed.

quote by George Sand

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Suddenly one day

Suddenly one day everything is empty like space, and you are aware of one principle pervading all the 10,000 things.  You know then that your heart is so vast that it can never be measured.

- Daikaku

How to Spend an Hour

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence.  And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

- Saint Francis de Sales

The Light of Smiles

     I will light the match of smiles.  My gloom veil will disappear.  I shall behold my soul in the light of my smiles, hidden behind the accumulated darkness of ages.  When I find myself, I shall race through all hearts with the torch of my soul-smiles.  My heart will smile first, then my eyes and my face.  Every body-part will shine in the light of smiles.

     I will run amid the thickets of melancholy hearts and make a bonfire of all sorrows.  I am the irresistible fire of smiles.  I will fan myself with the breeze of God-joy and blaze my way through the darkness of all minds.  My smiles will convey His smiles and whoever meets me will catch a whiff of my divine joy.  I will carry fragrant purifying torches of smiles for all hearts.

from Metaphysical Meditations by Paramahansa Yogananda (1982).