Zen

Hope, Humor, and Inspiration


Quotes for Thought and Inspiration

That's what happens when you're angry at people. You make them part of your life.
--Garrison Keillor

Life has lessons to teach. We can remember them and share them with others, or we can forget them and have to learn them again.
--Jan Pishok

Only by holding ourselves with the compassion of forgiveness do we experience our goodness and respond to ourselves with wisdom and care.
--Tara Brach

There only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterward, when you've worked on your own corner. 
--Aldous Huxley

There is no happiness; there are only moments of happiness.
--Spanish proverb

Today well-lived makes each yesterday a beautiful memory and each tomorrow a vision of promise.
--Author Unknown

All truths wait in all things.
- Walt Whitman

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.
--Sebastien R. N. Chamfort

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
--James Baldwin

Nonviolence is the weapon of the strong.
--Mahatma Gandhi

What is defeat?. . . Nothing but the first step to something better.
 --Wendell Phillips

Everything changes.  Nothing remains without change.
--Gautama Buddha

What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath.
--Thomas Crum

We can do no great things, only small things with great love. 
--Mother Teresa

If you can laugh at it, you can live with it.
--Erma Bombeck

Patience is a particular requirement. Without it, you can destroy in an hour what it might take you weeks to repair.
  --Charlie W. Shedd

You really need to take care of yourself because you won't be good for anyone else unless you take care of yourself.
--Harry Bartholomew

People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.
--Joseph Fort Newton

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
--Franz Kafka

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
--William James

Take care of the earth. It was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children.
--Native American proverb
 
We have not inherited the world from our forefathers-- we have borrowed it from our children. 
--Kashmiri proverb

Why is it so difficult to find God?  It is because you are looking for something you have never lost.
--Meher Baba

When the mind is not aroused, this is discipline.
When the mind is unmoved, this is concentration.
When the mind is not obscured, this is insight.
--Hseuh-yen, 13th Century Ch’an Master

We are not unlike a particularly hardy crustacean. ... With each passage from one stage of human growth to the next, we, too, must shed a protective structure.
--Gail Sheehy

Existence begins in every instant.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

They are able because they think they are able.
--Virgil

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
--Maya Angelou

Feel the life that you are, the life that animates the body. Feel it in your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest... 
- Eckhart Tolle

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it: it's only good for wallowing in.
--Katherine Mansfield

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.  When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.
--Gautama Buddha

He who helps a friend in woe is like a fur coat in the snow.
--Russian Proverb

 

Even
 after
 all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
  "You owe me."
Look
 what happens with a love like that,
It lights the
 whole
 sky.
--Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
 

This is the true joy in life, to be used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, to be thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap.  To be a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.  I am a member of a community and as a member it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can before I die.  Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
--George Bernard Shaw
 

 I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
--D. H. Lawrence

 

Keep knocking and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there.
--Jelaluddin Rumi
 

Facts are not frightening.  But if you try to avoid them, turn your
back and run, then that is frightening. 
--Krishnamurti
 

 Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.
--Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

 

It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
--Sally Kempton

I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.
--Anne Frank

As we are, so do we see.
--William Blake

Nothing is worth more than this day.
--Goethe

Even if you understand and follow all of the rules for more effectively engaging manipulators, life with them is not likely to be easy.
--George K. Simon Jr.

There is only one great adventure and that is inwards towards the self.
--Henry Miller

The world is its own magic.
--Suzuki Roshi

Cherish that which is within you.
--Chang-tzu

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
--Jimmy Carter

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
--Gautama Buddha

 Mile by mile, life's a trial.
Yard by yard, it's not so hard.
Inch by inch, it's a cinch.
--Proverb

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
--Leo Buscaglia

Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it.
--Eckhart Tolle

Grief is a journey, often perilous and without clear direction, that must be taken. The experience of grieving cannot be ordered or categorized, hurried or controlled, pushed aside or ignored indefinitely. It is inevitable as breathing, as change, as love. It may be postponed, but it will not be denied.
--Molly Fumia

Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of the refinement, enlightenment, integrity and equality of that commonwealth's people.
--L.T. Danshiell

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
--Chinese Proverb

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.
--Will Durant

Remember to be gentle with yourself and others.  We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.  Care for those around you.  Look past your differences.  Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made.  And Give.  Give in any way you can, of whatever you possess.... Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.
--Kent Nerburn, Letter to My Son

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.
--Spanish proverb

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping themselves.
--Emerson

The world can only be as sane and healthy as the individuals living in it.  If we want to live in a balanced environment, we must find and heal what is out of balance with ourselves.
--Mahatma Gandhi

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms: a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual.  Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
--Rumer Godden in A House with Four Rooms

 Don't quit five minutes before the miracle happens.
--Anonymous

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
--Wendell Berry

Who do you hold above you or below you?
Someone is being diminished.
--K. Bradford Brown

Why is it so difficult to find God? It is because you are looking for something you have never lost.
--Avatar Meher Baba, Meher Baba Calling, p. 30

Blessed is he who has learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate.
-- William Arthur Ward

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
--Edward Abbey

 You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
--Doug Floyd

Spirituality is the sacred center out of which all life comes, including Mondays and Tuesdays, rainy Saturday afternoons in all their mundane and glorious detail . . . The spiritual journey is the soul's life commingling with ordinary life.
--Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion [1990]

Walk slowly. Don't rush. Each step brings you to the best moment of your life, the present moment.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Can you imagine if you really let it in that you are not a problem to be solved in any way?  Imagine you knew that anything that would tell you otherwise is just a movement of thought in the mind that says "Whatever is, isn't the way it is supposed to be."  So the biggest act of compassion starts within.  And when the self is no longer seen as a problem, this is called "the peace that passes all understanding."
--Adyashanti

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
--Helen Keller

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
--A.J. Muste

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
--Simone Weil

One hundred percent of the shots you don't make won't go in.
--Wayne Gretzky

Leap and the net will appear.
--Julia Cameron

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
--Robert F. Kennedy

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
--Jedi Master Yoda

So live that you wouldn't mind selling the family parrot to the town gossip.
--Will Rogers

All the harm, fear, and suffering in the world are caused by attachment to the self:  Why should I hold on to this great demon?
--Shantideva

Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.
--Mahatma Gandhi

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
-- Chinese Proverb

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
--Chinese proverb

Everyone wishes to have truth on their side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
--Richard Whately

Paradise is where I am.
--Voltaire

Everything we are looking for is right here in the present moment.
- -Thich Nhat Hanh

Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance to the whole world?
--Basho

The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.
--Swedish proverb

I can change only myself, but sometimes that is enough.
--Ruth Humlecker

This is a simple program for complicated people.
--Saying heard at meetings

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
--J. B. Massieu

The best things in life are nearest.  Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path right just before you.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

Trying to pray is praying.
--Anonymous

Learning to live is learning to let go.
--Sogyal Rinpoche

One cannot have wisdom without living life.
--Dorothy McCall

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
--Benjamin Disraeli

Be yourself.  No one can ever tell you you're doing it wrong.
--James Leo Herlihy

If one can accept one's sin, one can live with it. If one cannot accept it, one has to suffer the inevitable consequences.
–-Carl Jung

Life is something that has to be lived and not talked about.
--Carl Gustav Jung

There is a voice that doesn't use words.  Listen.
--Jelaluddin Rumi

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she;
But, Oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!

--Robert Browning Hamilton

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
-
-Raymond Lindquist

The purpose of life is not to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach, but to make them fly in formation.
--Author unknown

Don't chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object.  Find joy and peace in this very moment.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.
--Ram Dass

There is no reality except the one contained within us.  That is why so many people live such an unreal life.  They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
--Hermann Hesse

My life is my message.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.
--Arthur Somers Roche

Feel yourself being quietly drawn by the deeper pull of what you truly love.
--Jelaluddin Rumi

It is wisdom to believe the heart.
--George Santayana

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us...
--Marcel Proust

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens.
--Carl Jung

Sharing is healing.
-
-Cathy Stone

Peace begins with each of us taking care of our bodies and minds everyday.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Love is a positive feeling and if one cultivates this feeling in their life, they will surely free themselves from any unbalanced condition that surrounds them.
--Syd Banks

When we lose God, it is not God who is lost.
--Anonymous

Kindness is the mark of faith; and whoever has not kindness has not faith.
--The Prophet Mohammed

When we walk to the edge of the light we have and take that step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe one of two things will happen: there will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.
—Anonymous

We have to make a very sharp distinction between authentic religion and hijacked religion.  Authentic religion is a message of peace.  No variations.
--Huston Smith

And this above all, to thine own self be true.
And it must follow as night the day,
thou canst not be false to any man.

--Shakespeare

Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking.
--Dean William R. Inge

Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity.
--Aristotle

The Buddha's teaching leads us to the realization that we must always strive to harm no sentient being, human or nonhuman, whether or not it is in our selfish interest to do so.
--Norm Phelps

The human brain forgets ninety percent of what goes on.
--Jan Milner

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.
--Charlie Parker

Whatever you love, you are.
--Jelaluddin Rumi

A smile is the shortest distance between two people.
--Victor Borge

The wise person says, "I am looking for the truth," and the fool, "I have found the truth."
--Russian proverb

We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts, we make the world.
--Gautama Buddha

Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.
--Howard Cutler

It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The more deeply we are our true selves, the less self is in us.
--Meister Eckhart

When we restore peace within ourselves, we have a chance to restore peace with others.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Kindness in words creates confidence.  Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.  Kindness in giving creates love.
--Lao-Tzu

Resolve to be thyself; and know that who finds himself, loses his misery.
--Matthew Arnold

May God steal from you
All that steals you from Him.
Rabi'a al-Alawiyya, Islamic mystic

May the tree of our life
Be firmly rooted in the soil of love.
Let good deeds be the leaves on the tree.
May words of kindness form its flowers
And may peace be its fruits.
--Amma

I always entertain great hopes.
-
-Robert Frost

When we speak of being highly developed spiritually, this does not mean that we float in the air.  In the fact, the higher we go, the more we come down to earth.
--Chogyam Trungpa

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
--Albert Einstein

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.
--Albert Camus

To understand everything is to forgive everything.
--Gautama Buddha

Humility is our acceptance of ourselves.
--Anonymous

There is no end.
There is no beginning.
There is only the infinite passion of life.
--Federico Fellini

All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.
--Kabir

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-
-Abraham Maslow

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
--Havelock Ellis

Yesterday is already gone, tomorrow is not yet here.  Today is the only day available to us.  Today is the most important day of our lives.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Fearful as reality is, it is less fearful than evasions of reality.
--Caitlin Thomas

..the world moves for love.  It kneels before it in awe...  
--M. Night Shyamalan

Evil is an abstraction that enables you to look at someone and not see the person.
--Lee Thorn

Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have people who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have people who will deal likewise with their fellow humans.
--St. Francis of Assisi

As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.
--Mohandas K. Gandhi

Forgiveness is all-powerful. Forgiveness heals all ills.
--Catherine Ponder

You grow up the first day you have the first real laugh—at yourself.
--Ethel Barrymore

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
--Henry Miller

Let everyone sweep in front of his [or her] own door, and the whole world will be clean.
--Goethe

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy.  Our own brain, our own heart is our temple:  The philosophy is kindness.
--H. H. the Dalai Lama

Great teachers never strive to explain their vision - they simply invite you to stand beside them and see for yourself.
--Rev. R. Inman

Contentment and happiness depend solely on the mind, not on external objects or circumstances.
--Amma

Love is the lamp that lights the universe: without that light . . . the earth is a barren promontory and man the quintessence of dust.
--Mary Elizabeth Braddon

If you don't have a sense of humor, it's just not funny anymore.
--Wavy Gravy

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
--Goethe

If you look for the truth outside yourself, it gets farther and farther away.
Tung-Shan

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind.
-- William Blake

Learning stamps you with its moments.
--Eudora Welty

Give everything away except your garden.
Your worry, your fear, your small-mindedness...
Your garden can never be taken from you.
--Lynn Park

Do not cut down the tree that gives you shade.
--Arabian proverb

Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.
--Rev. Margaret Shepard

When I came in, they told me, "Let us love you until you can learn to love yourself.
--Anonymous

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to humankind.
--Albert Schweitzer

In the end one only experiences oneself.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

The first step to wisdom is silence; the second is listening. 
--Author Unknown

We are all connected to everyone and everything in the universe.  Therefore, everything one does as an individual affects the whole.  All thoughts, words, images, prayers, blessings and deeds are listened to by all that is.
--Serge Kahili King

Of course, it is important to be a good listener—but it also pays, sometimes, to be a little deaf.
--Ruth Bader Ginsburg's mother-in-law's advice to her on conflict resolution

The Bookshop has a thousand books,
All colors, hues, and tinges,
And every cover is a door
That turns on magic hinges.
--Nancy Byrd Turner

When I listen to the music of life, I'm able to join in the dancing.
--Katherine Long

If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying?  If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?
--Shantideva

I wanted a perfect ending.  Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.  Delicious Ambiguity.
--Gilda Radner (passed away of ovarian cancer at age 42)

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
--Bill Cosby

Enjoy your body.  Use it every way you can.  Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it.  It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
--Kurt Vonnegut

Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
--Eric Hoffer

We're not here to lose our sense of humor.
--Richie Berlin

It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.
--Unknown

Nobody throws stones through somebody else's window if they've got a window of their own.
--Ronald Bruder, founder of Education for Employment

Do all you can with all that you have, in the time that you have, in the place that you are.
--Author Unknown

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
--Author Unknown

The sun shines down, and its image reflects in a thousand different pots filled with water.  The reflections are many, but they are each reflecting the same sun.  Similarly, when we come to know who we truly are, we see ourselves in all people.
--Amma

Change in all things is sweet.
--Aristotle

It is more profitable to turn away thine eyes from such things as displease thee than to be a slave to contention.
--Thomas a Kempis

The future you shall know when it has come; before then, forget it.
--Aeschylus

If you come to help me, you are wasting your time.  But if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.
--Lilla Watson, Aboriginal elder

Dream always of a peaceful, warless, disarmed world.
--Robert Muller

Pray to God, row to shore.
--
Anonymous

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
--William James

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
--Natalie Goldberg

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
--Pablo Picasso

We must take care not to make intellect our god.  It has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.  It cannot rule, only serve.
--Albert Einstein

The winds of grace are blowing all the time. You have only to raise your sail.
--Sri Ramakrishna

The Universe does not want you perfect, it wants you to be perfectly you.
Find your true Self are and you become peace.
--Author Unknown

Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.
--Anne Frank

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
--Dr. Robert H. Schuller

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Smart people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
--Mark Twain

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again... but also, she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
--Mark Twain

We're all animals and we all have basically the same rules.  Be nice.
--Jules Sylvester, professional snake handler

All beings tremble before violence.  All fear death.  All love life.
--Gautama Buddha

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Life is life's greatest gift.  Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own.  On life's scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature that owns it than the largest.
--Lloyd Buggle, Jr.

To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibilities of happiness.
--Sir John Lubbock

Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness.
--Leo Buscaglia

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
--Seneca

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
--Theodore Rubin

We are what we are.
--Motto of Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor

Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
--Sogyal Rinpoche

Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines
And forget about hope. Time goes running, even
As we talk. Take the present, the future's no one's affair.
--Horace

One can travel this world and see nothing.  To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.
--Giorgio Morandi

The reality is that changes are coming . . .They must come. You must share in bringing them.
--John Hersey

All of life is a dream.  We are a walking mirror.  God is a mirror—everything that we think, feel or believe is reflected back to us through this great mirror that is life.  The world does not create what we are experiencing; we do.
--Don Jose Luis

Watching a child acquire language, I realize, again, that naming things demystifies them.
--Mary Casey

Life is not life at all without delight.
--Coventry Patmore

WILL POWER = Our WILL-ingness to use a Higher POWER.
--Anonymous

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.  That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He can jail me, he may even kill me, but he can't make me hate him.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., referring to Governor George Wallace

We must rapidly begin the shift from a THING oriented society to a PERSON oriented society.  When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.  A nation can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Peace is more than the absence of tension.  It is the presence of justice.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare.
--Ai Ibn-Abu-Talib

Be aware of wonder.
--Robert Fulghum

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
Silence is deep as Eternity;  speech is shallow as Time.
--Thomas Carlysle

The thought manifests as the word;  the word manifests as the deed;  the deed develops into habit;  and habit hardens into character.  So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings.
--Gautama Buddha

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves:  we do unto others as we do unto ourselves.  We hate others when we hate ourselves.  We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves.  We forgive others when we forgive ourselves.  We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
--Eric Hoffer

What is necessary to change a person is to change their awareness of themselves.
--Abraham Maslow

The deeds you do today may be the only sermon some people will hear today.
--St. Francis of Assisi

Fear is the cheapest
room in the house.
I'd like to see you
in better living conditions.
--Hafiz

Gratitude is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all others.
--Cicero

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
--E. M. Forster

On the day you were born, you begin to die.  Do not waste a single moment more.
--Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say; it is you who must say this. We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
--Archibald MacLeish, WW I veteran

Unless our desire for human compassion is stronger than our desire to be right, to be secure or to belong, love will elude us.
--Marsha Sinetar

The perspective of Love doesn't leave anybody out.  Until your vision and compassion is big enough to include those who oppose you, you are simply contributing to the continuation of destructiveness.  The end of separation is the salvation for all.
--Adyashanti

Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
--Dr. Karl Menninger

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
--Dorothy Bernard

All things come to him who waits—provided he knows what he is waiting for. 
--Woodrow Wilson

Courage is more than standing for a firm conviction. It includes the risk of questioning that conviction.
--Julian Weber Gordon

How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
--William Shakespeare

It takes time to succeed because success is merely the natural reward for taking time to do anything well.
--Joseph Ross

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
--Winston Churchill

We are put here on earth to learn to endure the beams of love.
--William Blake

Keep your recovery First to make it Last.
--Anonymous

Be the person your dog thinks you are.
--Author Unknown

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.  Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
--Denis Waitley

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins. 
--Carlos Santana

Everything's got a moral if only you can find it.
--Lewis Carroll

Take sips of this pure wine being poured.  Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup.
--Jelaluddin Rumi

Your concept or perception of reality is not reality.
When you are caught in your perceptions and ideas
you lose reality.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

A bit of the fragrance clings to the hand that gives the flowers.
--Chinese Proverb

For fast acting relief, try slowing down.
--Lily Tomlin

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
--Michelangelo

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
--Samuel Butler

It is not my experience that we are here to fix the world, that we are here to change anything at all. I think we are here so the world can change us.
And if part of that change is that the suffering of the world moves us to compassion, to awareness, to sympathy, to love, that is a very good thing.
--Cheri Huber

Courage: The power to let go of the familiar.
--Raymond Lindquist

Gratitude is our most direct line to God and the angels.  If we take the time, no matter how crazy and troubled we feel, we can find something to be thankful for.
--Terry Lynn Taylor

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
--Italian proverb

Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.
--Oscar Wilde

Meditate.  Live purely.  Be quiet.  Do your work with mastery.  Like the moon, come out from the clouds!  Shine.
--Gautama Buddha

The greatest tragedy in life is not death;  the greatest tragedy takes place when our talents and capabilities are underutilized and allowed to rust while we are still living.
--Amma

Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere.
--Susan Griffin

The quality of mercy is not strain'd;  it droppeth as the Gentle Rain from
Heaven Upon the Place beneath.  It is twice Blest:  It blesseth the one that gives, and the one that takes.
--William Shakespeare

Peace is not the absence of conflict; it's the absence of inner conflict.
--Author Unknown

F.E.A.R. = Frustration, Ego, Anxiety and Resentment.
--Anonymous

The Separation between "you" and "I", you and your world, you and your God is cut through by a sense of humor.
--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

If not us, who?
If not here, where?
If not now, when?
If not for the kingdom, why?
Dare the dream.
--Author Unknown, adapted from Rabbi Hillel 

We do not remember days, we remember moments.
--Casare Pavese

Unstiffen your supple body.
Unchatter your quiet mind.
Unfreeze your fiery heart.
--Celeste West

Life is a verb, not a noun.
--Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As long as the earth can make a Spring every year, I can.
And as long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can.
--Alice Walker

There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
--Soren Kierkegaard

You love me so much; you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered.
--D. H. Lawrence

Awake.  Be the witness of your thoughts.  You are what observes, not what you observe.
--Gautama Buddha

Contentment makes poor men rich. Discontent makes rich men poor.
--Benjamin Franklin

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation is the dawn of wisdom.
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Unconditional love corresponds to one of the deepest longings, not only of the child, but of every human being.
--Erich Fromm

We find comfort among those who agree with us—growth among those who don't.
--Frank A. Clark

Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't we?
--Rose Kennedy

Words are the voice of the heart.
--Confucius

The world I see: A frozen barren wasteland it would be
Without the work my head and heart
And hands do
To heal its pain.
All things must die, and then be born anew.
To help in this great task, that life be not
In vain,
The world needs me.
--Michael Hedley Burton

Time spent attempting to change others affords little time for personal change.
--Georgette Vickstrom

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
--Aesop

A medical doctor, George S. Stevenson, wrote, "The solution may not give you everything you want. Sometimes, it may give you nothing but a chance to start all over again. But whatever little it gives you is much more than you give yourself by letting your emotions tear you apart."

I have no doubt that faith is only pure when it does not negate the faith of another.  I have no doubt that evil can be fought and that indifference is no option.  I have no doubt that fanaticism is dangerous.  And of all the books in the world on life, I have no doubt that the life of one person weighs more than them all.
--Elie Wiesel

A room without books is like a body without a soul. 
--Cicero

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
--Samuel Johnson

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

When one is full of Love and Compassion, one cannot draw a line between two countries, two faiths, or two religions.
--Amma

When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the facade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.
--Fred Rogers

I can't handle it, God. You take over.
--Anonymous

Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share, and sought advantage over no one.
--Robert Brault

I can stand what I know. It's what I don't know that frightens me.

--Frances Newton

You are cold, but you expect kindness.
What you do comes back in the same form.
God is compassionate,
but if you plant barley,
don't expect to harvest wheat.
--Jelaluddin Rumi

There is nothing permanent except change.
--Heraclitus

I wish we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.
--Pablo Neruda

Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you are, only the way you see it.
--Thaddeus Golas

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
--Eden Phillpotts

A smile is the lighting system of the face, the cooling system of the head, and the heating system of the heart.
--Author Unknown

All rising to great places is by a winding stair.
--Gautama Buddha

All human beings hold to the tools of their own destruction.
--Barbara Gordon author of "I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can" [1979]

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.  The opposite of art is not
ugliness, it's indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's
indifference.  And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
--Elie Wiesel

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
--Winston Churchill

My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.
--His Holiness The Dalai Lama

You know you've created God in your own image when he hates the same people you do.
--Annie Lamott

In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.
--J. Sawhill

Love involves a willingness to suffer and to be inconvenienced.
--Lewis F. Presnall

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.
--Buddhist Saying

People say you have to travel to see the world.  Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see just about all that you can handle.
--Paul Auster

Happiness consists of a solid faith, good health, and a bad memory.
--Clare Boothe Luce

If there's a harder way of doing something, someone will find it.
--Ralph E. Ross

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
--George Eliot

One comes, finally, to believe whatever one repeats to one's self, whether the statement is true or false.
--Napoleon Hill

Over and over, we begin again.
--Banana Yoshimoto

Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
--Earl Nightingale

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation it would be the ability of each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
--Charles Schultz

Scatter joy.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be awake, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely awake.
--Henry Miller

Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
--Chinese Proverb

I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
--Pablo Picasso

We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others...  Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with... the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.
--Lord Baden-Powell

With each true friendship, we build more firmly the foundation on which the peace of the whole world rests.  
--Mahatma Gandhi

In the solitude of your mind
     are the answers
 to all your questions
       about life.
        You must
      take the time
         to ask
          and
        listen.
--Bawa Mahaiyaddeen

Perhaps peace is not, after all, something you work for, or "fight for".  It is indeed "fighting for peace" that starts all the wars.  What, after all, are the pretexts of all these Cold War crises but "fighting for peace"?  Peace is something you have or do not have.  If you are yourself at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.  Then share your peace with everyone and everyone will be at peace.
--Thomas Merton

Find your true weakness and surrender to it.
Therein lies the path to genius.
Most people spend their lives using their strengths
to overcome or cover up their weaknesses.
Those few who use their strengths
to incorporate their weaknesses,
who don't divide themselves,
those people are very rare.
In any generation there are a few
and they lead their generation.
--Moshe Feldenkrais

One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come crashing down.
-- Baltasar Gracian

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
--Bradley Miller

The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.
--Sir James Jeans

... the more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair.  Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego -- your need to possess and control -- and transform you into a generous being.  The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous -- large souled. 
--Sam Keen

Nothing is unless our thinking makes it so.
--William Shakespeare

A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.
-- Sinclair Lewis

Only with equanimity can we see that everything that comes into our circle has come to teach us what we need to know.
--Pema Chodron

This is the true joy of Life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one... the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
--George Bernard Shaw

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Be the person you wish others to be.
--Margaret Ryan

Peace begins when you smile, when you help, when you listen. 
Peace begins when you breathe, when you breathe, when you breathe. 
When you breathe slowly and consciously, you quiet your body's stress chemistry, you begin to relax, you create peace. 
Imagine everyone on earth breathing, relaxing, creating peace. 
Peace begins right now, this moment. 
Peace begins with you.
--Marc Rosenbush

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it: this is knowledge.
-- Confucius

Look, the wind vane fluttering in the autumn breeze
Takes hold of certain things that cannot be held.
--Feng Chih

The foolish reject what they see and not what they think;
the wise reject what they think and not what they see.
--Huang Po

All things pass... Patience attains all that it strives for.
--St. Teresa of Avila

In conflict, it is love that wins.  Love is the strongest protection.  If you have love, it is as if Heaven itself were keeping you safe.
--Tao Te Ching 67

It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched.
--Tillie Olsen

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We make a living by what we get.  We make a life by what we give.
--Winston Churchill

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it.
--Mark Twain

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Let's rally for peace...  Understanding is knowing what to do.  Wisdom is knowing what to do next.  Virtue is actually doing it.
--Tristan Gylberd

Whatever men attempt, they seem driven to overdo.
--Bernard Baruch

The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.
--Basil O'Connor

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
--Jimi Hendrix

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The secret of health
for both mind and body
is not to mourn for the past,
worry about the future,
or anticipate troubles
but to live in the present moment
wisely and earnestly.
--Gautama Buddha

The best things in life are appreciated most after they have been lost.
--Roy L. Smith

Respectful dialogue, in the interest of searching for more complete truth, is considerably more productive than arguing for the purity of position.
--Gerard Vanderhaar

It is easier to fight for one's principles than live up to them.
--Alfred Adler

May the peace of God disturb you always.
--Fr. Anthony De Mello

Imagination is more valuable than knowledge.
--Albert Einstein

Today's impossibilities are tomorrow's miracles.
--Dr. Robert H. Schuller

The sign of God is that we may be led where we did not plan to go.
--Unknown

Your brain is capable of handling 140,000 million bits of information in one second, and if you take hours or days or weeks to reach a vital decision, you are short-circuiting your most valuable property.
--Jerry Gillies

A non-violent revolution is not a program of seizure of power.  It is a program of transformation of relationships, ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
--"Gandhi on Non-Violence", ed. by Thomas Merton

Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?
--William Blake

And if not now, when?
--The Talmud

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
--Robert Frost

Finish each day and be done with it...  You have done what you could;  some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;  forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day;  you shall begin it well and serenely.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness.
--Eckhart Tolle

One night I lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers.  And I learned that pilgrims from every land, every color and class and rank, all snored in the same language.
--Malcolm X

Discussion is for those who say, "What I say is right, and what you say is wrong."  A sage never says such a thing.  Hence, there is no discussion.
--Hazrat Inayat Khan

Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem.
--Ayn Rand

Drops of water hollow out a stone.
--favorite proverb of Pope John XXII

If one is going to be truthful, one has to be very tender.
--Florida Scott-Maxwell

More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul.
--William Blake

Nobody's family can hang out the sign, "Nothing's the matter here."
--Chinese Proverb

Simple is beautiful.
Knowing how to simplify our minds from desire and greed will make our lives full of happiness and peace.
--Cahyanto Lesmana

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
--Francois de la Rouchefoucauld

Every corner of the public psyche is canvassed by some of the most talented citizens to see if the desire for some merchandisable product can be cultivated.
--John Kenneth Galbraith

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, you are dreadfully like other people.
--James Russell Lowell

The brave don't live forever, but the cautious don't live at all.  Here's to the brave!
--Timothy Luce

I can live for two months on a good compliment.
--Mark Twain

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.
--Frank Kent

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
--H. L. Mencken

The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth,
dwelling deeply in the present moment
and feeling truly alive.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

God creates. People rearrange.
--Joseph Casey

A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.  
--Wendell Berry

Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance.
--Indira Gandhi

When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.
-- Fernando De Rojas

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
--Mahatma Gandhi

I hope... that [hu]mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats;  for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.
--Benjamin Franklin

Nothing else will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own.
--Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons, The Mothers Almanac [1975]

Let the entire game happen on its own, springing up and falling back like waves and notice how everything vanishes and reappears, magically, again and again, time without end. 
--Author Unknown

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
--George Santayana

So long as one has a longing to obtain any particular object, one cannot go further than that object.
--Hazrat Inayat Khan

Let there be peace in the sky and in the atmosphere,
     peace in the plant world and in the forests;
Let the cosmic powers be peaceful;
Let Brahma be peaceful;
Let there be undiluted and fulfilling peace everywhere.
--Atharva Veda

In Indonesia the words for "thank you" are "terima kasih," which, if you translate them literally, mean "accept love for what it is."
--Tamalia Alisjahbana

An adult is one who had lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep.  The wise man is a happy child.
--Arnaud Desjardins

If I have freedom in my life,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
--Richard Lovelace

Education either... is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
--Paulo Freire

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
--Vincent Van Gogh

Though a man (sic) go to battle a thousand times against a thousand men, if he conquers himself, he is the greater conqueror.
--Gautama Buddha

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
--Author Unknown

There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change—and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future.
--Noam Chomsky

It is clear the future holds opportunities - it also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to seize the opportunities, avoid the pitfalls, and get back home by 6:00.
--Woody Allen

We have within us a limitless supply of new beginnings.
--Joan Fitzgerald

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.
--Havelock Ellis

No one is so foolish as to prefer to peace, war, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.
--Croesus, King of Lydia, in Herodotus' "The Persian Wars"

It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that isn't so.
--Mark Twain 

Every new moment that arises in your life can now be a point of choice. . .in which you can choose to treat yourself and others with Compassion rather than Judgment.
--David Harp

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
--Arthur Schopenhauer

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
--Dorothy Bernard

As a child, I walked through the world with wonder and awe. Each day started with a question and ended with a question. I had the mind of a beginner.
--Anonymous

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
--Aristotle

Utilize, don't analyze. 
-–AA motto

Nature is the Art of God.
--Sir Thomas Browne

Nothing happens unless first a dream.
--Carl Sandburg

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
--W.B. Yeats

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. --Anais Nin (1946), The Diary of Aunt Nin, Vol 4 (1973)

Laughter, by definition, is healthy. --Doris Lessing

Often happiness calls but we are too busy to answer. --Ellen H.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. --Samuel Johnson

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

The creative thinker is flexible and adaptable and prepared to rearrange his thinking.
--A.J. Cropley

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will become so.
--Emile Corie

Patience is needed with everyone, but first of all with ourselves.
--Saint Francis De Sales

Spirituality is the sacred center out of which all life comes, including Mondays and Tuesdays, rainy Saturday afternoons in all their mundane and glorious detail… The spiritual journey is the soul's life commingling with ordinary life. --Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion [1990]

Sobriety is a big gift box with a hundred little packages inside to unwrap.
--Oscar Morris

When they take your smile away they might just as well shoot you.
--Violet Hensley

Ideally, both members of a couple in love free each other to new and different worlds.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
--George Bernard Shaw

To avoid pain at all costs forces us to reject half the lessons life can teach.
--Jan Pishok

Music drives the devil away.
--Martin Luther

The liberating encounter with God/ess is always an encounter with our authentic selves resurrected from underneath the alienated self. It is not experienced against, but in and through relationships, healing our broken relations with our bodies, with other people, with nature.
--Rosemary Ruether

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Give us to go blithely on our business this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

The process of living, for each of us, is pretty similar. For every gain there is a setback. For every success, a failure. For every moment of joy, a time of sadness. For every hope realized, one is dashed.
--Sue Atchley Ebaugh

We need four hugs a day for survival.
We need eight hugs a day for maintenance.
We need twelve hugs a day for growth.
--Virginia Satir

All human failures are the result of a lack of love.
--Alfred Adler

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.   --e e cummings

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.  –Mahatma Gandhi

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
--Benjamin Disraeli

Dare to be empty.
Dare to let go.
Dare to believe.
--Elisabeth L.

I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.
--Oscar Wilde

The distance doesn't matter; only the first step is difficult.
--Mme. du Deffand

Whatever happens at all, happens as it should.
--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Man, like the bridge, was designed to carry the load of the moment, not the combined weight of a year at once.
--William A. Ward

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
--Chinese Proverb

Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come, whispering that it will be happier.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet.
--Roger Miller

May you live all the days of your life.
--Jonathan Swift

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.  –Diane Ackerman

I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
--Edward Everett Hale

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.
--e e cummings

We need to let the old go, so the new can emerge.
--Peggy Bassett

The years teach us much, which the days never knew.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do what you will with another person;
But never put them out of your heart.
--The Dalai Lama

The process rather than the product is primary in caring, for it is only in the present that I can attend to the other.
--Milton Mayeroff

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.  --Herman Melville

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
--Winston Churchill

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.  –John Lubbock

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.  –Thomas Carlyle

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.  –William James

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.  –Althea Gibson

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.  –George Moore

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.  –Albert Einstein

It’s the whole, not the detail, that matters.  –German proverb

Let him that would move the world first move himself.  –Socrates

The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.  –Robert Louis Stevenson

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.  –Dale Carnegie

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.  –Henry David Thoreau

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.  –Disraeli

Procrastination is like a credit card:  It’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.  --Christopher Parker

The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you’ll have.  –Anna Quindlen

‘Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.  –Abraham Lincoln

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.  –Eleanor Roosevelt

You don’t get harmony when everyone sings the same note.  –Doug Floyd

The most important trip you take in life is meeting people half way.  –Henry Boyle

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.  –Colin Powell

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.  –Winston Churchill

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  –Helen Keller

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.
--Charles Holton

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Having spent the better part of my life trying either to relive the past or experience the future before it arrives, I have come to believe that in between these two extremes is peace.
--Anonymous

When you do all the talking you only learn what you already know.
--Anonymous

He who helps a friend in woe is like a fur coat in the snow.
--Russian Proverb

All great reforms require one to dare a lot to win a little.
--William L. O'Neill

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
--Abigail Van Buren

People have a set point of happiness which explains why they return to a certain level of happiness even after tragedy . . . It can be difficult, if you've had difficult parents, to feel good about yourself . . . but you don't need to live out that script for the rest of your life . . . you can change it. Those people who have a belief in something greater than themselves are those who come back much faster from sadness.
--Dr. Joyce Brothers
The Today Show, January 4, 2002

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty…if only we have the eyes to see them.—John Ruskin

Follow your dream . . .
if you stumble, don't stop
and lose sight of your goal,
press on to the top.
For only on top
can we see the whole view . . .
--Amanda Bradley

When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.
--Herophilus

The past has flown away. The coming month and year do not exist; ours only is the present's tiny point.
--Shabestari

God gave burdens, also shoulders.
--Yiddish proverb

Pray to God, but row to shore.
--Russian proverb

Don't worry if your job is small,
and your rewards are few.
Remember that the mighty oak,
Was once a nut like you.
--Anonymous

Don't waste your time hating a failure.
--Clarissa Pickola Estes

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you've worked on your own corner.
--Aldous Huxley

So when you are listening to somebody,
Completely, attentively, then you are
Listening not only to the words, but also
To the feeling of what is being conveyed,
To the whole of it, not part of it.
--J. Krishnamurti

The art of life is to show your hand.
--C.V. Lucas

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
--Henry Ford

Progress, Not Perfection.
--Alcoholics Anonymous slogan

God does not ask your ability
Or your inability.
He asks only your availability.
--Mary Kay Ash

The ego always attempts to buy out the spirit.
--Anonymous

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone it is not a diet to keep body and soul together.
--Bette Davis, The Lonely Life (1962)

This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
--Soren Kierkegaard

. . . there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
--Booker T. Washington

Love, and love alone, is capable of giving thee a happier life.
--Ludwig van Beethoven

People have a need to feel their pain.
Very often pain is the beginning of a great deal of awareness.  As an energy, it awakens consciousness.
--Arnold Mindell

Yes, I made up my mind. . .
Today I do have a choice,
And I like the idea of
Being a smiling Goddess.
--Betty MacDonald

Knowing when to say No and when to say Yes is the beginning of true wisdom.
--Ralph T. Rupert

It's not enough to talk to plants, you also have to listen. --David Bergman

As a child, I walked through the world with wonder and awe. Each day started with a question and ended with a question. I had the mind of a beginner.
--Anonymous

You want me to succeed so much.
Could you understand if I failed? ...
Could you love me if I failed?
--Sister Mary Paul

I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.
--Alcoholics Anonymous (The AA Big Book)

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved . . . the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.
--George Eliot

Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
--William Shakespeare

Forewarned, forearmed; being prepared is half the victory.
--Miguel de Cervantes

Healing can occur when I see my family of origin as just a vessel to bring me into new spiritual growth, rather than as the predictor of all my life's work.
--Judi Hollis

This instant is the only time there is.
--Gerald Jampolsky

Chance everywhere has power.
--Ovid

When you’re not blonde and thin, you come up with a personality real quick.  --Kathy Najimy

Addiction is answering the spiritual calling inside us by going to the wrong address.
--Chris Ringer

Anyone can get sober . . .
The trick is to stay and to live sober.
--Living Sober

One moment of a person’s life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of all fiction.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without also helping himself.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's a lesson to be learned in every painful experience.
--Mary Timberlake

The way to love anything is to realize it may be lost.
--G. K. Chesterton

Roman philosopher Seneca said hundreds of years ago: The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusion; reality can be attained by someone who is detached.
--Simone Weil

Tennyson once said, "There is more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the Creeds."

Even if you understand and follow all of the rules for more effectively engaging manipulators, life with them is not likely to be easy.
--George K. Simon Jr.

For is it not true that human progress is but a mighty growing pattern woven together by the tenuous single threads united in a common effort?
--Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek)

If your life is ever going to get better, you'll have to take risks. There is simply no way you can grow without taking chances.
--David Viscott

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