Self Enquiry Quotes & Sayings

Enlightened enquiry alone leads to liberation. Supernatural powers are all illusory appearances created by the power of maya (mayashakti). Self-realization which is permanent is the only true accomplishment (siddhi). Accomplishments which appear and disappear, being the effect of maya, cannot be real. They are accomplished with the object of enjoying fame, pleasures, etc. They come unsought to some persons through their karma. Know that union with Brahman is the real aim of all accomplishments. This is also the state of liberation (aikya mukti) known as union (sayujya). — Ramana Maharshi

A man that is of Copernicus' Opinion, that this Earth of ours is a Planet, carry'd round and enlightn'd by the Sun, like the rest of them, cannot but sometimes have a fancy ... that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, nay and their Inhabitants too as well as this Earth of ours. ... But we were always apt to conclude, that 'twas in vain to enquire after what Nature had been pleased to do there, seeing there was no likelihood of ever coming to an end of the Enquiry ... but a while ago, thinking somewhat seriously on this matter (not that I count my self quicker sighted than those great Men [of the past], but that I had the happiness to live after most of them) me thoughts the Enquiry was not so impracticable nor the way so stopt up with Difficulties, but that there was very good room left for probable Conjectures. — Christiaan Huygens

Being an artist:
And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate , I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what state of mind is propitious for creative work, because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve to the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare's mind, I conjectured, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. — Virginia Woolf

It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect ... The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms. — Lord Kelvin

(he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of enquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru. — Patrick O'Brian

Funnily enough we have never had one enquiry for Paul Scholes. You know why? Because they all know he will never leave. in my time he would be in the top six or seven (best United players ever) without a doubt. His contribution and quality have been great, even without the fantastic goals he has scored. [ ... ] He has that wonderful velvet touch on the ball. When he gets it, it goes stone dead. It is wonderful to see that amidst all the mayhem that can happen in a football match. — Alex Ferguson

Language is one component of the human cognitive capacity which happens to be fairly amenable to enquiry. So we know a good deal about that. — Noam Chomsky

Truth never lost Ground by Enquiry, because she is most of all Reasonable. — Various

Gandhi, Harlem, Christ, Jews in Europe, a black man living over there on Broadway in the Union Theological Seminary in 1930: you never know the connections between things, people, places, ideas. You never know where you'll find them.most people don't know where to find them or even that there's any point to finding them. Who even looks? Who's got time to look? Whose job is it to look? Ours. Historians. It's part of our job. The more you know, the more you read, the better will be your intuition. You can use your intuition as first order Geiger counter of likelihood, of probability and also for starting new lines of enquiry. But whatever you end up doing for a living, wherever you do it, you'll need intuition and curiosity, add much of it as you can muster. Develop these as an athlete develops muscles and impulses. — Elliot Perlman

Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind. — John Stuart Mill

There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be too lazy to think. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks. — Benjamin Peirce

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable. — Parmenides

Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself. — John Henry Newman

The peculiar fascination of the brain lies in the fact that there is probably no other object of scientific enquiry about which we know at once so much and yet understand so little. — Gerd Sommerhoff

in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court. He — Frederick Forsyth

I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression. — Dylan Thomas

How she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation. — Jane Austen

Self-Enquiry is not asking you to believe or to trust - it is putting a mirror in front of you and asking you to look. Enquiry is suited to many people in the West, because we are more mental. And it is very direct. So unsparing is its look that nothing can escape. — Mooji

You know he was dealing drugs?' asked Hunter. 'Yes, small time, I'm told.' 'I wonder whether that could be related though, if he was murdered, that is?' 'It's certainly one line of enquiry but we have several at the moment and, as I say, I have no real evidence that he was murdered. All I have is the knowledge that his knot wouldn't just untie itself.' Hunter agreed to — Damien Boyd

Who now would thrust enquiry on / Beyond necessity of desire? — Geoffrey Hill

There is nothing to figure out, and nothing to understand. You are not a person. There is not such thing as a person. The so-called person is merely a thought in the mind of God. In truth, it's even not that. There is only pure Awareness, Consciousness - formless, unborn and undying, and that is who you are. How can the apparent mind possibly comprehend this? It is not possible. The finite can never understand the infinite. The mind does not exist. Seek the Source of the mind, the Source of the 'I-thought', by constant, patient Self-enquiry. When the mind is quiet, You shine in all your glory. Be Yourself, and be happy. — Jeff Foster

It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A climate of suspicion and distrust, which can beset speculative research, ignores the teaching of the ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical enquiry. — Pope John Paul II

..for a man ( Roger Scruton ) whose calling and raison d'etre is that difficult business - not just telling the truth but finding out what the truth would be like if we told it - it was a huge blow to be exposed as a lickspittle of tobacco giants. If your job is enquiry, you cannot accept money for providing the answers before the question has been examined. — A. N. Wilson

The simplest aspect of self-enquiry is to just hold onto the sense I AM, the sense of Being. Keep the sense of "I" or "I AM" by itself. Everyone can do this exercise - it brings immediate results. — Mooji

The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature. — Peter Medawar

But this girl had already suffered violence at the hands of a man; whatever she may have been in life, our cutting and probing in the name of scientific enquiry seemed like a further violation. — S.J. Parris

The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion. — Byron Katie

That which is worth taking up is the self-enquiry that reveals jnana; that which is worth enjoying is the grandeur of the Self; that which is worth renouncing is the ego-mind; that in which it is worth taking refuge, to eliminate sorrow completely, is one's own source, the Heart. — Ramana Maharshi

We are all more or less ill till we find -Self-enquiry our Oneness with everyone else. — Douglas Harding

What is enquiry into the Truth? It is the firm conviction that the Self is real, and all, other than That, is unreal. — Adi Shankara

A few centuries from now, the level of self-knowledge that our own age judges necessary to get married might be thought puzzling, if not outright barbaric. By then, a standard, wholly non-judgemental line of enquiry (appropriate even on a first date), to which everyone would be expected to have a tolerant, good-natured and non-defensive answer, would simply be: 'So in what ways are you mad?' Kirsten — Alain De Botton

The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond ... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so — Francis Bacon

Such enquiry cannot avoid the ethical dimension to education, the different ways in which people (teachers, wider community and learners) find value in some experiences and activities rather than in others. — Richard Pring

But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. — Thomas Merton

Green production is certainly an important topic for newspapers. Environmental considerations are part of every enquiry today and come into most aspects of equipment specification. On balance, however, cost-effectiveness is a more urgent requirement for most print organisations. — Eric Bell

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms ... If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I look up into his green eyes and wisely note that he's not in a fucking about mood. I want to bring to his attention that I'm not happy about his evasion of my enquiry, but I know it will get me entirely nowhere right now. Besides, I'm absolutely delighted to see my domineering man back. It's been too long. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

If one has given oneself utterly, watching the beloved sleep can be a vile experience. Perhaps some of you have known that paralysis, staring down at features closed to your enquiry, locked away from you where you can never, ever go, into the other's mind. As I say, for us who have given ourselves, that is a horror. One knows, in those moments, that one does not exist, except in relation to that face, that personality. Therefore, when that face is closed down, that personality is lost in its own unknowable world, one feels completely without purpose. A planet without a sun, revolving in darkness. — Clive Barker

The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think ofa wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it. — David Hume

An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering. — Byron Katie

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries. — David Hume

Philosophy is the strangest of subjects: it aims at rigour and yet is unable to establish any results; it attempts to deal with the most profound questions and yet constantly finds itself preoccupied with the trivialities of language; and it claims to be of great relevance to rational enquiry and the conduct of our life and yet is almost completely ignored. But perhaps what is strangest of all is the passion and intensity with which it is pursued by those who have fallen in its grip. — Kit Fine

Experiences such as, 'I went; I came; I was; I did,' come naturally to everyone. From these experiences, does it not appear that the consciousness 'I' is the subject of those various acts? Enquiry into the true nature of that consciousness, and remaining as oneself, is the way to understand, through enquiry, one's true nature. — Ramana Maharshi

I sent letters of enquiry to all persons whose names were given, and received not one reply. There are several ways of explaining. One is that it is probable that persons who have experiences such as those told of in this book, receive so many "crank letters" that they answer none. Dear me - once upon a time, I enjoyed a sense of amusement and superiority toward "cranks". And now here am I, a "crank", myself. Like most writers, I have the moralist somewhere in my composition, and here I warn - take care, oh, reader, with whom you are amused, unless you enjoy laughing at yourself. — Charles Fort

A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe. — Fritjof Capra

Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death . . . It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth up on any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error. - BENJAMIN RUSH, "AN ENQUIRY INTO THE EFFECTS OF PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS UPON CRIMINALS, AND UPON SOCIETY," MARCH 9, 1787 — Jon Ronson

Only the most reckless, self-indulgent of men would deny Aquinas's conclusion, God. Albeit a concealed one, the presence of an overmind is self-evident and necessary, yet in the same breath, only the most negligent and asinine would terminate the enquiry at such a premature rung, believing as the theologian William Paley believed that the earthly design is inherently beneficial. — John Zande

Doctors need to be held accountable, since power corrupts. There must be complaints procedures and litigation, commissions of enquiry, punishment and compensation. At the same time if you do not hide or deny any mistakes when things go wrong, and if your patients and their families know that you are distressed by whatever happened, you might, if you are lucky, receive the precious gift of forgiveness. — Henry Marsh

Hello slash query is all well? parenthesis enquiry after suitability of timing slash insinuations of warmness sixty percent insinuations of belief that interlocutor has topic to be discussed forty percent blah blah." I raised an eyebrow. "It was pointless. — China Mieville

It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on first, without enquiry and almost at first sight, the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends; the parts known give us evidence enough that the unknown parts cannot be much amiss. — George Santayana

A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific enquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations. — John Herschel

By doubting we come to enquiry, and through enquiry we perceive truth. — Pierre Abelard

I am not suggesting that history or scepticism by themselves can provide all the answers to all these questions. History, after all, is not a forward-looking discipline. It can only tell us what happened the last time, not what will happen next time. Similarly, scepticism is hardly sufficient to do anything but ask questions. But together they - history and scepticism - form a potent force for enquiry. — Sidin Vadukut

Design is a field of concern, response, and enquiry as often as decision and consequence ... it is convenient to group design into three simple categories, though the distinctions are in no way absolute, nor are they always so described: product design (things), environment design (places) and communication design (messages). — Norman Potter