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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

1/1/2008 to 5/31/08

Science arose from poetry--when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life's blessings.
Oprah Winfrey
Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.
Muhammad
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
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson
The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.
Persian Proverb
A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
Elbert Hubbard
It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment -- but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?
Lord Byron
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
Alice Walker
Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
Mohandas Gandhi

Thought is cause: experience is effect. If you don't like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.
Marianne Williamson

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.
Albert Ellis

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Martin Buber

The meaning of life is nothing very special. Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.
from Monty Python "The Meaning of Life"

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
Socrates

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
Richard Bach

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus

The enlightened give thanks for what most people take for granted … As you begin to be grateful for what most people take for granted, that vibration of gratitude makes you more receptive to good in your life.
Michael Beckwith

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.
Byron Katie

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.
George Orwell

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Albert Camus

Nothing can surpass the mystery of stillness.
e.e.cummings

Enjoy each moment. Appreciate what is. Be completely here and now. That is where eternity is found.
Peter Mc Williams

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.
Anthony de Mello

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.
Albert Ellis

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
Marianne Williamson

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
John Petit-Senn

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

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

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.
Alice Walker

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
C. S. Lewis

I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.
Booker T. Washington

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.
Mohandas Gandhi

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Henry David Thoreau

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.
Eric Hoffer

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.
Dalai Lama

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

If we don't like the world we're in, there is always the option to create the world we desire with our acts of kindness.
Hanoch and Meladee McCarty

I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.
Jean Ingslow

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
Leo Tolstoy

I like thinking of possibilities. At any time, an entirely new possibility is liable to come along and spin you off in an entirely new direction. The trick, I've learned, is to be awake to the moment.
Doug Hall

Far away in the sunshine are my highest inspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott

Commit to thinking about what you want, rather than how impossible or difficult that dream may seem. Give your personal dreams a place to hang out on the balance scale so that you can see them in your imagination and they can soak up the energy they deserve. Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire.
Dr. Wayne W Dyer, from Being In Balance

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love - this is an old rule.
Dhammapada

Above all, don't wish to become somebody special; your only concern should be, as thought follows thought, to avoid clinging to any of them.
Dogen

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists -- as it surely will. Then act with courage.
Ponca Chief White Eagle

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you.
Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor

Now I know the secret;
There is nothing that I lack.
If I give my love to you,
You'll surely give it back.
Eric Clapton and Bonnie Bramlett in Let It Rain, 1970

Insight is of no use unless it results in action. From our deep awareness of our shared desire to avoid pain comes a sense of responsibility to relieve others of suffering.
The Dalai Lama

Things are beautiful if you love them.
Jean Anouilh, Mademoiselle Colombe

Beauty is truth’s smile
when she beholds her own face
in a perfect mirror.
Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies

At the still point of the
turning world...
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point,
there the dance is....
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens.
Johannes Kepler

If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Treat people as if they are what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Goethe

Virtues are virtues because they give joy once they are practiced. If a virtue does not give joy, it is not a virtue.
Hazrat Inayat Khan

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
Morihei Ueshiba

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone--but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.
Walter Anderson

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.
Ralph Marston.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.
Isaac B. Singer

Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory.
F.W. Faber

When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.
John Hume

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
Jonathan Swift

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.
George William Russell

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Alfred Korzybski

Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, a loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it's impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.
Barbara Kingsolver

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.
Buddha.

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.
Tyron Edwards

Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
Eckhart Tolle

Every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid but by an infine expecation of the dawn.
Henry David Thoureau

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

There is no perfect solution for all things in this world. When city folks go to the countryside to hike, they wish for a bright sunshiny day... while the local farmers wish for rain for their crops.
Tsai Chih

Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.
Eckhart Tolle

Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it.
A Course in Miracles

The people never give up their liberties...but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Do good to thy Friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.
Benjamin Franklin

The more we know, the better we forgive. Those who feel deeply feel for all living beings.
Madame De Stael

What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.
Karl Jaspers

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.
Carl Jung

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
Helen Keller

One can overcome the forces of negative emotions, like anger and hatred, by cultivating their counter-forces, like love and compassion.
The Dalai Lama

Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
Ruth Gordon

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
J. B. Yeats

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present.
Thomas Merton

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Plato

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

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide."
Norman Douglas

Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James

Laughter is carbonated holiness.
Anne Lamott

On the level of undefined energy we are one. Energy is energy. You are an individual experience of energy, but we are one. We feel our individualness and yet we are also collective. There is no separateness, just an experience of separateness. We are a collective having individual experiences.
Janet Barrett

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
Robert Frost

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
Hugh White

The sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own. He is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for Virtue is kind. He is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for Virtue is faithful.
Lao Tzu

It is virtuous activities that determine our happiness, and the opposite kind that produces the opposite effect.
Aristotle, Ethics

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
Jawaharlal Nehru

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.
Arnold J. Toynbee

The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.
G. K. Chesterton

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.
Turkish Proverb

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.
William A. Foster

Common sense dictates that we evaluate our beliefs on the basis of how they affect us. If they make us more loving, creative, and wise, they are good beliefs. If they make us cruel, jealous, depressed and sick, they cannot be good beliefs.
Barbara Marx Hubbard

The world is good-natured to people who are good natured.
William Makepeace Thackeray

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
Alan Watts

As rain does not break into a well-thatched house, so craving does not break into a well-trained mind.
The Dhammapada

Thought is a language that has no sound, while words are the symbols of a language. When language and thinking are excessive, they become a hindrance to wisdom.
Zen

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.
Cadet maxim, USMA, West Point, NY

Life is a magic vase filled to the brim; so made that you cannot dip into it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it - drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.
John Ruskin

Persons and societies do not submit passively to surroundings and events. They make choices as to the places where they live and the activities in which they engage--choices based on what they want to be, to do and to become. Furthermore, persons and societies often change their goals and ways; they can even retrace their steps and start in a new direction if they believe they are on a wrong course. Thus, whereas animal life is prisoner of biological evolution which is essential irreversible, human life has the wonderful freedom of social evolution which is rapidly reversible and creative. Wherever human beings are concerned, trend is not destiny.
Rene Dubos

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is an image of God, and not a lifeless image, but the living essence of the divine nature which beams full of all goodness.
Martin Luther

The meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out into the world and doing something original.
Tom Morris

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself.
Sherlock Holmes

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Robert F. Kennedy

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
Francesco Petrarch

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away.
Sir Arthur Helps

Integrity has no need of rules.
Albert Camus

Paradise is always where love dwells.
Jean Paul F. Richter

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

So great has been the endurance, so incredible the achievement, that, as long as the sun keeps a set course in heaven, it would be foolish to despair of the human race.
Ernest L. Woodward

Don't ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Harold Thurman

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell

We come into this world crying while all around us are smiling. May we so live that we go out of this world smiling while everybody around us is weeping.
Persian proverb

Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of a Liberated One.
Huang Po

Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.
Sophia Loren

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists -- as it surely will. Then act with courage.
Ponca Chief White Eagle

The teacher, if indeed wise, does not bid you to enter the house of their wisdom, but leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
Kahil Gibran

Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.
Swami Sivananda

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
Pericles

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
Bob Marley

Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.
Norman Vincent Peale

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

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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

Science arose from poetry--when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life's blessings.

Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.

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.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

Thought is cause: experience is effect. If you don't like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.

The meaning of life is nothing very special. Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

The enlightened give thanks for what most people take for granted … As you begin to be grateful for what most people take for granted, that vibration of gratitude makes you more receptive to good in your life.

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Nothing can surpass the mystery of stillness.

Enjoy each moment. Appreciate what is. Be completely here and now. That is where eternity is found.

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

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

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.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.

If we don't like the world we're in, there is always the option to create the world we desire with our acts of kindness.

I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

I like thinking of possibilities. At any time, an entirely new possibility is liable to come along and spin you off in an entirely new direction. The trick, I've learned, is to be awake to the moment.

Far away in the sunshine are my highest inspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love - this is an old rule.

Above all, don't wish to become somebody special; your only concern should be, as thought follows thought, to avoid clinging to any of them.

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists -- as it surely will. Then act with courage.

Now I know the secret; There is nothing that I lack. If I give my love to you, You'll surely give it back.

Insight is of no use unless it results in action. From our deep awareness of our shared desire to avoid pain comes a sense of responsibility to relieve others of suffering.

Things are beautiful if you love them.

Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

At the still point of the turning world... Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is....

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens.

If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others.

Treat people as if they are what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Virtues are virtues because they give joy once they are practiced. If a virtue does not give joy, it is not a virtue.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone--but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory.

When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.

Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.

Every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid but by an infine expecation of the dawn.

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

There is no perfect solution for all things in this world. When city folks go to the countryside to hike, they wish for a bright sunshiny day... while the local farmers wish for rain for their crops.

Now I know the secret;
There is nothing that I lack.
If I give my love to you,
You'll surely give it back.

Beauty is truth’s smile
when she beholds her own face
in a perfect mirror.

At the still point of the
turning world...
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point,
there the dance is....