"What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain."
"What a wonderful power the machine gives you. But is it going to dominate you? This statement of what the need and want is must come from you, not from the machine, and not from the government that’s teaching you, not even from the clergy. It has to come from one’s own inside. And the minute you let that drop, and take what the dictation of the time is, instead of the dictation of your own eternity, you have capitulated to the devil, and you’re in hell."
"Princes have but their titles for their glories; An outward honour for an inward toil."
"But it is not only of space in the Church which we ought to be jealous, but also of the interior of the house of God in us, so that it might not become a house of merchandise, or a den of robbers."
"Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside."
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean."
"[Scripture], by which, “as in a glass, we may survey ourselves, and know what manner of persons we are,” (James 1. 23) discovers ourselves to us; pierces into the inmost recesses of the mind; strips off every disguise; lays open the inward part; makes a strict scrutiny into the very soul and spirit; and critically judges of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. iv. 12) It shows us with what exactness and care we are to search and try our spirits, examine ourselves, and watch our ways, and keep our hearts, in order to acquire this important self-science; which it often calls us to do. “Examine yourselves; prove your own selves; know you not yourselves? Let a man examine himself.” (1 Cor. xi. 28)"