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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

12/1/11 to 5/31/12

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.
Mark Twain

There is certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Peter F. Drucker

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
From a headstone in Ireland

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
Shirley MacLaine

People occasionally come up to me and say: 'I want what you seem to have. Can you either give it to me or show me how to get it?' And I say to them: 'You have it already. You just can't feel it, because your mind is making too much noise. Quiet your mind, and it's yours.
Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now

While you are walking, smile and be in the here and now, and you will transform that place into paradise.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Doubt is a great tool for reality testing; it is debilitating as a place of residence. So, think of doubt as a momentary friend.
Jeannie Marshall

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
Buckminster Fuller

You want to know how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair.
Elie Wiesel

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.
Brian Tracy

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King, Jr

I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.
Theodore Isaac Rubin

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
Carl Jung

Follow what you are genuinely passionate about and let that guide you to your destination.
Diane Sawyer

Factual information alone isn't sufficient to guide you through life's labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive a mysteriously useful omen every day of your life.
Rob Brezsny

In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
Dag Hammarskjöld

The brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as aerobics sculpt the muscles, so mental training sculpts the gray matter in ways scientists are only beginning to fathom.
Richard Davidson

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.
Andre Gide

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.
Abram L. Urban

Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive.
Rnaud Desjardins

It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.
Bertolt Brecht

The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.
Esidrius Erasmus

Never let the odds keep you from pursuing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.
Satchel Paige

The important thing is somehow to begin.
Henry Moore

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
Bill Cosby

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Ursula Le Guin

Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield

The more complicated the world gets and the more intrusive it becomes on our personal psychological space and privacy, the more important it will be to practice non-doing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
Maya Angelou

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.
Max Muller

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Horace Walpole

No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
Milton

Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.
Shirley Hufstedler

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
Ernest Holmes

You must be resolutely determined that whatever you do shall always be the best of which you are capable.
Charles E. Popplestone

This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
William Ralph Inge

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James

The art of happiness is to serve all, and all shall serve you.
Yogi Bhajan

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
Muhammad Ali

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.
don Miguel Ruiz

The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly to you.
Thomas Dreier

What happens to you and what you do are one and the same process. There is no real separation between one thing called you and another quite different thing called the universe. When you stop talking and naming, they are quite obviously one.
Alan Watts

Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce

If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Bruce Barton

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
Joseph Campbell

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.
Gail Sheehy

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.
Ram Dass

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem.
Manuel Hernandez
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
Ram Dass

The undisturbed mind is like the calm body of water reflecting the brilliance of the moon.
Yagyu Jubei

Never confuse motion with action.
Benjamin Franklin

A happy life consists of tranquility of mind.
Cicero

Barn's burnt down --
now
I can see the moon.
Mizuta Masahide
(In 1688 Masahide's house was burnt down, prompting him to write his most famous haiku)

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.
Frances E. Willard

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.
Ram Dass

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other sees stars.
Fredrick Langbridge

Never try to be better than someone else. Learn from others, and try to be the best you can be. Success is the by-product of that preparation.
John Wooden
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
D. H. Lawrence

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. . . For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can . . . The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automation, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
William James

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.
Barbara Sher

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
Stephen Levine
Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.
Albert Einstein
Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.
Mark Victor Hansen
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.
Mahatma Gandhi
All joy in this world comes from wanting others to be happy, and all suffering in this world comes from wanting only oneself to be happy.
Shantideva
The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them.
Helen Keller
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest meaning and significance.
Pablo Casals
The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.
Dan Millman
The world is a spell, an enchantement, an amazement, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game.
Alan Watts
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
Helen Keller
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Philo
We are kept from the experience of spirit because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas... As we begin to clear away this clutter, the energy of divine light and love begins to flow through our beings.
Thomas Keating
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
Every time and every place is uniquely different. There is no need to compare it with any other time and place. Just carefully taste the present - that is enough!
Zen saying
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will neverexist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
Martha Graham
The Universal is always the same, the specifics are always different.
Robert Aitken
Everything in this world is transitory and fleeting...No man was ever born whocould stop his body from changing constantly. Body is the name of a series of changes.
Paramanananda
So you want to know what my secretis? You see, I don't mind what happens.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.
Barbara Sher
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Albert Camus, The Fall
I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.
Leo Buscaglia
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful to be responsible to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter to count to stand for something to have made some difference that you lived at all.
Leo Rosten
What we call the "Self" is not a separate object with an independent destiny and life, but more a process that continues until "Nirvana".
Buddha
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The meaning of life is to live moment to moment. Just follow the flow of life from childhood to old age. Be born when it is time to be born and die when it is time to die.
Zhuang Zi
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim
One has to keep the mind unruffled and not be affected by the fleeting phenomena around one. When the mind is unmoved, one will not be enslaved by worldly events.
Huineng
We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.
Thornton Wilder
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach
He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has.
Epictetus
Everything in this world is transitory and fleeting...No manwas ever born who could stop his body from changing constantly. Body is the name of a series of changes.
Paramanananda
What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden
Love, compassion, and tolerance are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it if you have love, compassion, and tolerance.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, For the Love of God
Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.
Wayne Dyer
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
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
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven and hell a fable.
Charles Caleb Colton
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu
If you want congenial companionship, if you want to be loved, you must first think thoughts of love and good-will.
Emmet Fox
You can see that a magnificent leap of awareness is required for the fish to extend its vision beyond the water in which it is immersed to the source of the ripples. A similar leap of awareness will be required of you. When you understand the source clearly, you'll see that the ripples of your mind have nothing to do with you; you'll just watch them, without attachment, no longer compelled to overreact everytime a pebble drops.
Dan Millman
In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach
Life just is. You have to flow with it. Give yourself to the moment. Let it happen.
Jerry Brown
Itis difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair
Always remember that the only thought that you need to concern yourself with is the present one. The thoughts of yesterday orof last year do not matter now, because if you can get the present thought right it will make everything else right here and now.
Emmet Fox
When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person don't be surprised if they learn their lesson.
Will Rogers
In all affairs it's a healthything now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
Edgar Allan Poe
Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things.
Phillippians 4:8
Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. Climb slowly, steadily, enjoying each passing moment; and the view from the summit will serve as a fitting climax for the journey.
Harold B. Melchart
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Buddha
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.
Dag Hammarskjold
All great changes are preceded by chaos.
Deepak Chopra
Therecan be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
Carl Jung
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
Mae West
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan
Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace?
Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.
Eckhart Tolle
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
Peace starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share peace with neighboring communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
Dalai Lama
Wego here, there, to this place, to that one, always looking for happiness that is there inside.
Satchidananda
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
Henry Drummond
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.
John Burroughs
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.
I think the purpose of life is
to be useful
to be responsible
to be compassionate.
It is, above all
to matter
to count
to stand for something
to have made some difference that you lived at all.

Leo Rosten

If you understand, things are as they are.
If you do not understand, things are as they are.

Gensha

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quietreflection will come even more effective action.

Peter F. Drucker

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.

Charles de Lint

The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.

Bertrand Russell

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

Calvin Coolidge

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

Lao Tzu

We go here, there, to this place, to that one, always looking for happiness that is there inside.

Satchidananda

Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.

Jose Marti

Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.

Audre Lorde

You will find, as you look back on your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others.

Henry Drummond

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

George MacDonald

Ultimately, human intentionality is the most powerful evolutionary force on this planet.

George Leonard

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

Hugo Black

When the idea of any pleasure strikes your imagination, make a just computation between the duration of the pleasure and that of the repentance that is likely to follow it.

Epictetus

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

Mohandas Gandhi

Choose to live from the heart. When fear thoughts come, treat them as you would an unwelcome guest: Refuse to entertain them and eventually they go away. Lavish attention instead on thoughts of love.

Mary Manin Morrissey

Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom? Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word "Attention."

Zen story

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.

Albert Clarke

Ultimately, human intentionality is the most powerful evolutionary force on this planet.

George Leonard

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Richard P. Feynman

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

Alfred North Whitehead, in Time/Infinity

God is love, but God is also infinite intelligence, and unless these two qualities are balanced in our lives, we do not get wisdom; for wisdom is the perfect blending of intelligence and love.

Emmet Fox

Life is like a giant game of poker. The key to winning is to make the most of your good cards and get rid of your bad cards.

Steven Beresford

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

There is certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

People occasionally come up to me and say: 'I want what you seem to have. Can you either give it to me or show me how to get it?' And I say to them: 'You have it already. You just can't feel it, because your mind is making too much noise. Quiet your mind, and it's yours.

While you are walking, smile and be in the here and now, and you will transform that place into paradise.

Doubt is a great tool for reality testing; it is debilitating as a place of residence. So, think of doubt as a momentary friend.

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

You want to know how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

Follow what you are genuinely passionate about and let that guide you to your destination.

Factual information alone isn't sufficient to guide you through life's labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive a mysteriously useful omen every day of your life.

The brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as aerobics sculpt the muscles, so mental training sculpts the gray matter in ways scientists are only beginning to fathom.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.

Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive.

It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.

To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.

The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.

Never let the odds keep you from pursuing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.

The important thing is somehow to begin.

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.

Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.

The more complicated the world gets and the more intrusive it becomes on our personal psychological space and privacy, the more important it will be to practice non-doing.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

No one has ever become poor by giving.

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.

Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

You must be resolutely determined that whatever you do shall always be the best of which you are capable.

This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

The art of happiness is to serve all, and all shall serve you.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.

The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly to you.

What happens to you and what you do are one and the same process. There is no real separation between one thing called you and another quite different thing called the universe. When you stop talking and naming, they are quite obviously one.

Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.

The undisturbed mind is like the calm body of water reflecting the brilliance of the moon.

Never confuse motion with action.

A happy life consists of tranquility of mind.

Barn's burnt down -- now I can see the moon.

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other sees stars.

Never try to be better than someone else. Learn from others, and try to be the best you can be. Success is the by-product of that preparation.

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.

All joy in this world comes from wanting others to be happy, and all suffering in this world comes from wanting only oneself to be happy.

The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest meaning and significance.

The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.

The world is a spell, an enchantement, an amazement, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game.

Barn's burnt down --
now
I can see the moon.

Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace?
Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.
I think the purpose of life is
to be useful
to be responsible
to be compassionate.
It is, above all
to matter
to count
to stand for something
to have made some difference that you lived at all.

If you understand, things are as they are.
If you do not understand, things are as they are.