Eugene J. Martin Quotes

Most writers are successful in getting their readers’ attention, but fail at getting them to think. If you’re asked to explain anything philosophical to anyone, the chances are great their understanding will be superficial; it’s best they don’t understand than to think they do, so encourage them to grow into understanding and don’t hand them too much explanation.

Being able to communicate with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand them.

People find it easy to justify their frustration in the struggle to manipulate others, but find it hard to justify the struggle for their own growth.

Because of guilt there is painful diversion; because of greed there is playful diversion; because of grass there is pleasurable diversion.

There are lesser people not for what they are, but for why they are.

Money inspires activity, not honesty.

Rather than studying the laws of cause and effect, people spend their lives being the effect and running from the cause.

Just as feelings grow out of ignorance, intuition should grow out of knowledge.

Genius does not only require superior knowledge and skill, but also superior patience.

Conflict is necessary for growth. But too often conflict becomes a haven for the soul. Until one day, the soul can no longer free itself. In real growth the soul learns to fly rather than having the ego inflated with praise from accomplishments as if it were a balloon. Only because it buys time, do we develop a strong and protective ego. This is the early stage in the soul’s evolution, until such time when the soul hatches out of its shell, which is the ego, into a new world in which there is incomparable beauty.

All things – great, small, good, bad, friend, enemy—should be a lesson, not an obsession.