Wakefulness

"When you meet the true Guru, He will awaken your heart; He will tell you the secret of love and detachment, and then you will know indeed that He transcends this universe."

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty."

"When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories."

"Seraphim, The lost hosts awaken"

"I am the choice of their awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one."

"I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. … I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country."

"Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters. Let us awaken then, and evince a different spirit, — a spirit that shall inspire the people with confidence in themselves and in us, — a spirit that will encourage them to persevere in this glorious struggle, until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock."

"All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known."

"There are hours for rest, and hours for wakefulness; nights for sobriety and nights for drunkenness—if only so that possession of the former allows us to discern the latter when we have it; for sad as it is, no human body can be happily drunk all the time."

"Sleep is a curious condition to be in, yet it is so common and so natural that it is seldom thought of any more than a state of wakefulness. While one is asleep he is of no more use, can do no more good than he could if he were dead;...The difference, however, between sleep and death is very great."

"Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten peoples expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would."

"William O. Douglas, in Points of Rebellion (1970), p. 92"