[There is a sovereign royalty in taking no thought for oneself. To have needs is to assert a weakness; to claim something proves that we lack what we claim. To desire is to be impotent; it is to recognise our limitations and confess our incapacity to overcome them.

If only from the point of view of a legitimate pride, man should be noble enough to renounce desire. How humiliating to ask something for oneself from life or from the Supreme Consciousness which animates it! How humiliating for us, how ignorant an offence against Her! For all is within our reach, only the egoistic limits of our being prevent us from enjoying the whole universe as completely and concretely as we possess our own body and its immediate surroundings.]

Such too should be our attitude towards the means of action.

O Thou who dwellest in my heart and directest all by Thy supreme Will, Thou hast told me a year ago to burn all my bridges and cast myself headlong into the Unknown, as did Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon: it meant the Capitol for him or the Tarpeian Rock.

Thou didst hide then from my eyes the result of the action. Now still Thou keepest it secret; and yet Thou knowest that my equanimity remains the same before greatness as before misery.

Thou hast willed that for me the future should be uncertain and that I should go forward with confidence without even knowing where the road would lead.

Thou hast willed that I should put the care of my destiny utterly in Thy hands, and abdicate altogether all personal preoccupation.

This means undoubtedly that my road must be virgin even to my own thought.