Carlos Castañeda Quotes

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

~ Carlos Castañeda

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

~ Carlos Castañeda

Seek and see all the marvels around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else. - Don Juan

~ Carlos Castañeda

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

~ Carlos Castañeda

In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.

~ Carlos Castañeda

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.

~ Carlos Castañeda

The dying sun will glow on you without burning, as it has done today. The wind will be soft and mellow and your hilltop will tremble. As you reach the end of your dance you will look at the sun, for you will never see it again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south. To the vastness.

~ Carlos Castañeda

Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.

~ Carlos Castañeda

It isn't that as time goes by you're learning sorcery; rather, what you're learning is to save energy. And this energy will enable you to handle some of the energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know. Sorcery is a state of awareness.

~ Carlos Castañeda

The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

~ Carlos Castañeda

Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because it is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.

~ Carlos Castañeda

Nothing is pending in the world…nothing is finished, yet nothing is unresolved…Everything is filled to the brim.

~ Carlos Castañeda

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

~ Carlos Castañeda

Every warrior on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he's learning sorcery, but all he's doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power hidden in his being, and that he can reach it.

~ Carlos Castañeda

The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.

~ Carlos Castañeda

For an instant I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me, held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor.

~ Carlos Castañeda

All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.

~ Carlos Castañeda

Any path is only a path and there is no affront to oneself or to others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.

~ Carlos Castañeda

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

~ Carlos Castañeda

To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that.

~ Carlos Castañeda

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

~ Carlos Castañeda