"There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform." (Xenophon, "Hipparchicuscca" ["The Cavalry General"]. 355 BC)
"Practice yourself what you preach." (Titus Maccius Plautus, "Asinaria" ["The Comedy of Asses"], cca. 211 BC)
"They sit in meditation in the Ghosts’ Cave at the foot of the Black Mountain idly without preaching and without saying anything. Drawing their eyebrows together and closing their eyes, they say they are in the state of absolute samadhi and in the state of their fathers and mothers not yet born. Further, calling this state silence filled with eternal light, they identify their meditation with Zen." (Ta-hui Tsung-kao [letter to Chosha Jogen (Chang-she Chuang-yuan)] 1134)
"If the wrong person preaches a right teaching, even a right teaching can become wrong. If a right person expounds a wrong teaching, even a wrong teaching can become right." (Muso Soseki, "Muchū Mondō" ["Dialogues in a Dream", cca. 1344)
"Admire the diamond that can bear the hits of a hammer. Many deceptive preachers, when critically examined, turn out to be false." (Kabir, "Bijak", 17th century)
"Let the churches preach doctrines, theories, philosophies to their hearts' content, but when it comes to worship, the real practical part of religion, it should be as Jesus says, 'When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret'" (Swami Vivekananda, "Ishta", [lecture] 1895)
"Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga, 'When a man rejects all the superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue.' He sees God. He becomes God and helps others to become the same. This is all I have to preach. Doctrines have been expounded enough. There are books by the million. Oh, for an ounce of practice!" (Swami Vivekananda, 1895)
"My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is; to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life. God is in every man, whether man knows it or not; your loving devotion is bound to call up the divinity in him." (Swami Vivekananda, 1896)
"Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong." (Elbert G Hubbard, The Philistine, 1897)
"I have come to deal with principles. I have only to preach that God comes again and again, and that He came in India as Krishna, Rama, and Buddha, and that He will come again. It can almost be demonstrated that after each 500 years the world sinks, and a tremendous spiritual wave comes, and on the top of the wave is a Christ." (Swami Vivekananda, cca. 1900)
"In the great struggle between ignorance, distrust and brutality on one side, knowledge, understanding and peace on the other the scientist must stand fearlessly on the side of the latter, strengthening link between man and man and preaching that the only effective weapon of self-defense is good-will to others." (Albert Szent-Györgyi, [Nobel lecture] 1937)
"Live morality before you talk of it. Practise meditation before you preach it. Taste goodness before you recommend it. Gain bliss before you offer it to others." (Chinmayananda Saraswati)
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