Quotes from Stephen Cope

We only know who we are by trying on various versions of ourselves.

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. Now we can add a codicil: If you bring forth what is within you, it will save the world.

Gandhi insisted upon returning love for hatred and respect for contempt.

Our true self remains deeply hidden, incognito, submerged beneath a web of mistaken identities.

Frost was intuitively aware of an important principle: In the cultivation of dharma, there is nothing more important than understanding what conditions are needed, and relentlessly creating them.

And there is that wonderful, haunting voice of the true self that calls to us, that keeps us company as we stride deeper and deeper into the world, determined to save the only soul we really can save.

behind ourself, concealed—should startle most," wrote Emily Dickinson

Just let go of all the rest of the day, now. Let all of your worries roll off your shoulders; let's just enjoy being home in the body for the next hour and a half.

In effect, then, Beethoven became a musical seer. Like the mystical rishis of ancient India, he perceived aspects of reality that were beyond the perceptual range of ordinary people. Very few of his contemporaries could understand the musical leaps he had made. And of course, not seeing the genius of his refined perception, his critics called him "mad.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Eighty Years and More: 1815–1898, Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Indy Publishing, 2004

Jean H. Baker. Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists. Hill and Wang: New York, 2006

Peter James Stanlis. Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher. Second Edition. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008

Natalie S. Bober. A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost. Henry Holt: New York, 1998

Annie Dillard. The Writing Life. HarperCollins: New York, 1989

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A wretched coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress

David S. Reynolds. Walt Whitman. Oxford University Press: USA, 2005

in Jeffrey S. Cramer. Walden: A fully annotated edition. Yale University Press: New Haven, 2004

There is a certain kind of action that leads to freedom and fulfillment," Krishna begins. "A certain kind of action that is always aligned with our true nature." This is the action that is motivated by dharma. This is the action taken in the service of our sacred calling, our duty, our vocation. In dharma, it is possible to take passionate action without creating suffering. It is possible to find authentic fulfillment of all human possibilities.

Then a stranger—a Dutchman who has just arrived—catches my vision, jumps into my circle, and we dance a dance as fierce as I have ever danced before. If my back breaks, if I drop dead, it doesn't matter. I am twenty-four. I am healthy. I am whole.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. Shambhala: Boston, 1976

Robert T. Richardson, Jr. Henry Thoreau, A Life of the Mind. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1986

In monasteries of old, the monk's dharma, his purpose in life, was said to be this: to support the choir. In Latin, propter chorum. Literally, his life was lived "in support of the choir." He was not a soloist. He was not a diva. He was part of a magnificent whole.

Stephen Mitchell. Tao te Ching. Harper Perennial: New York, 1991

René Guénon. Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, NY, 2001