# Quote — Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

> If you come to a spiritual teacher — or this book — looking for stimulating ideas, theories, beliefs, intellectual discussions, then you will be disappointed. This is not a book to be read from cover to cover and then put away. Live with it, pick it up frequently, and more importantly, put it down frequently, or spend more time holding it than reading it. Many readers will feel naturally inclined to stop reading after each entry, to pause, reflect, become still. It is always more helpful and more important to stop reading than to continue reading. Allow the book to do its work, to awaken you from the old grooves of your repetitive and conditioned thinking. (intro)

- Author: [Eckhart Tolle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle.md)
- Book: [Stillness Speaks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle#Stillness_Speaks_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/if-you-come

## More from this book

> By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form. (Ch 5)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/by-knowing-yourself.md)

> The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender. (Ch 6)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/the-habitual-and.md)

> Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something, and thereby become diminished and be less. These two movements obscure the fact that being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, now. (Ch 5)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/most-peoples-lives.md)