Carlos Castaneda Quotes - Page 2

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.

When you need an answer, look over your left shoulder and ask your death.

A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.

Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior's indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference.

Your problems is that you think you have time.

Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He is turned is back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.

Men have to be hooked. Women don't need that. Women go freely into anything. That's their power and at the same time their drawback. Men have to be led and women have to be contained

Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do

If you were a warrior, you would know that the worst thing one can do is confront human beings directly.

The difficulty is to learn to perceive with your whole body, not with just your eyes and reason. The world becomes a stream of tremendously rapid, unique events. So you must trim your body to make it a good receptor. The body is an awareness; and it must be treated impeccably.

Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

Burn your bridges every 2 years.

Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length--and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.

A warrior never worries about his fear.

Our normal expectations about reality are created by a social consensus. We are taught how to see and understand the world. The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by social consensus.