Bez vedomia smrti je všetko je všetko obyčajne a triviálne.

Bojovník by nikdy nechcel byt inde ako tu a teraz.

Ak to nedokážeš pochopiť, si v skvelej kondícii. Iba keď chápeš, si v brynde.

Ak sa budeme zaoberať vysvetľovaním, hodí nás to presne tam, kde nechceme byť - do našeho nadhľadu na svet.

The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.

You say you need help. Help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.

Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

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

To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.

The art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.

A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. (without action, knowledge is a burden)

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.

Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I.

A warrior has to get rid of the tendency to define himself.

• "Die Erde ist ein Ganzes. Die Menschheit ist ein Ganzes. Der Kosmos ist ein Ganzes. Und ich selbst bin dies Ganze."

Byť bezchybný znamená dať si život do poriadku, aby si mal čím podoprieť svoje rozhodnutia a potom robil mnohom viac, než čo môžeš, aby si tie rozhodnutia uskutočnil.

Co dela bojovnik, nikdy nema dany postup. Bojovnik ma jen osobni silu. Zasteveni sveta. Tkvi v tom, ze do tkaniva kazdodenniho jednani zavede nejaky neharmonicky prvek, aby se zastavil jinak hladce plynouci tok obycajnich udalosti, udalosti, jejichz soupis nam v hlave poridil rozum. Neharmonicky prvek se nazyva nedelani.

Nic nemoze bojovnikoveho ducha zakalit ako suboj, k nemu ho vyzivaju nemozne osoby, ktore maju mocensku poziciu.

Nezlahcuj tajemstvi cloveka tim, ze by ses litoval nebo se ho snazil nejak rozumove vysvetlit. Zlehcuj v sobe hloupost cloveka tim, ze ji porozumis. Ale ani za jedno ani za druhe se neomluvej, objiho je potrebi. Clovek ma v sebe temnu stranku, ano, a ta sa menuje hlupost.

Sebeovladanie, kazen, trpezlivost, spravne nacasovanie. Jednat v hneve, jednat a neovladat sa a nemat dostatok sebekazne, nemat trpezlivost a zdrzanlivost, to znamena byt porazeny. Potom bud prejdes do inej skupiny, opustis cestu poznania alebo sa pripojis k radam malych tyranov. Stopar musi byt nelutostni, vychytraly, trpelivy a vlidny. Prvnim principem stoparstvi je, ze bojovnik vystopuje sam sebe. Nelitostne vychytrale trpelive a vlidne.

Nezalezi vubec na tom, jaky je nas konkretny osud, pokud mu ovsem celime s absolutnym odevzdanim.

Valka je pro bojovnika absolutni boj proti tomu individualnemu ja, ktore cloveka pripravilo o jeho silu. Predstava osobného ja nemá vôbec žiadnu cenu.

Sebedulezitost sa neda porazit utlocitom. Carodejove pry demaskovali vlastni dulezitost a zistili, ze je to sebelitost, ktora sa maskuje jako neco jineho. Sebelitost je skutocnym nepriatelom a zdrojom ludksej ubohosti. Miesto zaujmu (rozumu), Miesto bez lutosti -> Miesto ticheho poznania.

Vo svete carodejov nemozno menit ani revidovat rozhodnutia. Len co sa raz rozhodne, plati navzdy.

Neochvejny zamer je typ zamerania mysli na jedinu vec. Nie je mareny ziadnymi konfliktami, zaujmami ani prianiami. (ekaanta bhakti)

"When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning. "He slowly begins to learn... bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.

"Does it happen at once, don Juan, or little by little?" "It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished suddenly and fast."

Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity... a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning, and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.

That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. "It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will fumble with learning. He will rush when he should be patient, or he will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more."

"What becomes of a man who is defeated in that way, don Juan? Does he die as a result?" "No, he doesn’t die. His second enemy has just stopped him cold from trying to become a man of knowledge; instead, the man may turn into a buoyant warrior, or a clown. Yet the clarity for which he has paid so dearly will never change to darkness and fear again. He will be clear as long as he lives, but he will no longer learn, or yearn for, anything."

"But what does he have to do to avoid being defeated?" "He must do what he did with fear: he must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps; he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will arrive at a position where nothing can harm him any more. This will not be a mistake. It will not be only a point before his eyes. It will be true power. "He will know at this point that the power he has been pursuing for so long is finally his. He can do with it whatever he pleases. His ally is at his command. His wish is the rule. He sees all that is around him.

But he has also come across his third enemy: Power!

"Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master. "A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man."

"A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power."

"But what if he is temporarily blinded by power, and then refuses it?" "That means his battle is still on. That means he is still trying to become a man of knowledge. A man is defeated only when he no longer tries, and abandons himself."

"How can he defeat his third enemy, don Juan?" "He has to defy it, deliberately. He has to come to realize the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power, without his control over himself, are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he will have defeated his third enemy.

"The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning... and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age!

This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won’t be able to defeat completely, but only fight away. "This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind... a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.

"But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate through, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough."

• “My acts are sincere,” he said, “but they are only acts of an actor.”

• my recommendation is to keep incomprehensible things incomprehensible rather than making them part of the inventory of the first attention.

• Every act performed by sorcerers, especially by the naguals, is either performed as a way to strengthen their link with intent or as a response triggered by the link itself. Sorcerers, and specifically the naguals, therefore have to be actively and permanently on the lookout for manifestations of the spirit . Such manifestations are called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens. (synchronicity).

• Man gave up silent knowledge for the world of reason. The more he clings to the world of reason, the more ephemeral intent becomes. (Intent - [God's] will).
• It is possible for sorcerers, or average men, to need no one, to get peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge, directly from the spirit--to need no intermediaries.

Sorcerers count their lives in hours. In one hour it is possible for a sorcerer to live the equivalent in intensity of a normal life. This intensity is an advantage when it comes to storing information in the movement of the assemblage point.

• A nagual is empty. That emptiness doesn't reflect the world, it reflects infinity. A nagual has no boisterousness on his part, or assertions about the self. There is not a speck of a need to have either grievances or remorse. His is the emptiness of a warrior-traveler, seasoned to the point where he doesn't take anything for granted. A quiet, disciplined fighter whose elegance is so extreme that no one, no matter how hard they try to look, will ever find the seam where all that complexity has come together.
• The nagual Elias and The nagual Julian were astoundingly alike in that there was nothing inside them. They were empty. The nagual Elias was a collection of astounding, haunting stories of regions unknown. The nagual Julian was a collection of stories that would have anybody in stitches, sprawled on the ground laughing. Whenever I tried to pin down the man in them, the real man, the way I could pinpoint the man in my father, the man in everybody I know, I found nothing. Instead of a real person inside them, there was a bunch of stories about persons unknown. Each of the two men had his own flair, but the end result was just the same: emptiness, an emptiness that reflected not the world, but infinity.

Your malady is a very simple one: your world is coming to an end. It is the end of an era for you. Do you think that the world you have known all your life is going to leave you peacefully, without any fuss or muss? No! It will wriggle underneath you, and hit you with its tail. But an era doesn't really come to an end until the king dies. You are the king.

For warrior-travelers, there is only struggle, and it is a struggle with no end.

Your friends are your family, they are your points of reference. Therefore, they have to go. Sorcerers have only one point of reference: infinity.

Don't indulge in being fatigued. Your fatigue is, more than fatigue, a desire not to be bothered. Something in you resents being bothered. But it's most important that you exacerbate that part of you until it breaks down.

The only joy of a warrior-traveler is his aloneness. I wouldn't like you to try to help me, either. Once I leave, I am gone. Don't think about me, for I won't think about you. If you are a worthy warrior-traveler, be impeccable! Take care of your world. Honor it; guard it with your life!