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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

12/1/2010 to 5/31/11



It is wrong to think that misfortunes come from the east or from the west; they originate within one's own mind. Therefore, it is foolish to guard against misfortunes from the external world and leave the inner mind uncontrolled.

Buddha

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.

James Dent

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.

William Edgar Stafford

Knowledge increases in proportion to its use - that is, the more we teach the more we learn.

H. P. Blavatsky

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Great knowledge sees all in one. Small knowledge breaks down into the many.

Chuang Tzu

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.

Christopher Reeve

The real war will never get in the books.

Walt Whitman

Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.

Richard von Weizsaecker

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Albert Camus

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

Lao Tzu

In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it.

William Saroyan

Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives. One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it. That is what goals can do for us; concentrate our energy.

Denis Waitley

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

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

Joseph Campbell

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

Dag Hammarskjold

If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.

Lewis Carroll

Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Life is precious and time is a key element. Let's make every moment count and help those who have a greater need than our own.

Harmon Killebrew (June 29, 1936 – May 17, 2011)

Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is; it means to have the full capacity for joy and sadness or, to put it differently, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake.

Erich Fromm

Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Francis Bacon

Life is a constant creation. It is a moment by moment, instant by instant creation. I don’t mean by this that it is a set of discrete creations, it is not like that. But nevertheless, this spontaneity is constantly arising. And it is within this that is our freedom.

Albert Low

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Epictetus

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

Lao Tzu

I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

Theodore Roosevelt

When one's thoughts are neither frivolous nor flippant, when one's thoughts are neither stiff-necked nor stupid, but rather, are harmonious--they habitually render physical calm and deep insight.

Hildegard von Bingen

Fish swim, birds fly, and people feel.

Haim Ginott

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.

Aldous Huxley

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential, without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation.

J. Krishnamurti

He said not 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased'; but he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome.'

Julian of Norwich

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Confucius

Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge with one dash wipes the picture away.

Aeschylus

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Blaise Pascal

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

Peace Pilgrim

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

Garrison Keillor

Knowledge increases in proportion to its use - that is, the more we teach the more we learn.

H. P. Blavatsky

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Khalil Gibran

To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.

Rudolf Steiner

Treat those who are good with goodness,
And also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.

Lao-Tzu

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Alan Watts

To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.

Robert Muller

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

Alfred Adler

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet.

Brooke Medicine Eagle

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Aldo Leopold

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

Henry Ellis

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

Winston Churchill

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly.

Chögyam Trungpa

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

Dag Hammarskjold

Patriotism is a beautiful thing - to love your country, your land, and your people and have a deep emotional affinity. But it can be so easily corrupted to polarized thinking, to harming others and ourselves if we don't realize what it is that is beautiful. It is beautiful because it is love.

Patricia Sun

If your spiritual philosophy is not moving you to the state of peace, health, wealth and love your spirit desires...you need a new spiritual philosophy.

Sun Bear

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

What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.

Shinichi Suzuki

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

Japanese Proverb

I said to the almond tree, ''Friend, speak to me of God,'' and the almond tree blossomed.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.

Herodotus

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.

Marcus Aurelius

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Napoleon Hill

If you want a quality, act as if you already have it. If you want to be courageous, act as if you were - and as you act and persevere in acting, so you tend to become.

Norman Vincent Peale

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.

Norman Douglas

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Abigail Adams

I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

Martha Washington

Remember above all that mental stability comes by examining the contents of the mind, not by avoidence.

Vernon Howard

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

Howard Zinn

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Pete Seeger

Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.

Arlo Guthrie

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

Alice Koller

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Virginia Woolf

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

The Dhammapada

If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.

Padmasambhava

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

Robert Browning

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

Lord Byron

The miracle of love comes to you in the presence of the uninterpreted moment. If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life.

Byron Katie

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

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

Herman Melville

Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.

W. C. Fields

Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there is no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we already are--as soon as we stop pretending we're small or unholy.

Bo Lozoff

The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.

George Berkeley

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.

Arthur Golden

Funny, I guess destiny isn't the path chosen for us, but the path we chose for ourselves.

Megamind

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

Doug Coupland

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.

Stephen Jay Gould

He who sees the calamity of other people finds his own calamity light.

Arabian Proverb

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

William James

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.

Mark Twain

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

John Cage

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Soren Kierkegaard

...human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but...life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

Michel de Montaigne

Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Keller

Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful.

Benjamin Franklin

What you see in yourself is what you see in the world.

Afghan proverb

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

John Muir

If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.

John Maxwell

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Thomas Merton

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.

Eleanora Duse

To see your drama clearly is to be liberated from it.

Ken Keyes Jr.

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

In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.

Tony Robbins

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

John F. Kennedy

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.

Calvin Coolidge

Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Maya Angelou

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

R. Buckminster Fuller

All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!

Lucy Van Pelt In Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all labour, to minister to each other in all sorrow, to share with each other in all gladness, to be one with each other in the silent unspoken memories?

George Eliot

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

Albert Schweitzer

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It appears that every man's insomnia is as different from his neighbour's as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes clouds come and cover it, but the moon is always behind them. Clouds go away, then the moon shines brightly. So don't worry about clear mind: it is always there. When thinking comes, behind it is clear mind. When thinking goes, there is only clear mind. Thinking comes and goes, comes and goes, You must not be attached to the coming or the going.

Seung Sahn

If we can have a free access to our inmost consciousness, the cosmic energy is bound to come to the fore. If we go deep within, it comes like a spring, a never-failing spring. And when it comes, it permeates the whole body.

Sri Chinmoy

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

Ancient Buddhist Saying

I began to understand that the promises of the world are for the most part vain phantoms, and that to have faith in oneself and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.

Michelangelo

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

If there was already a path it would have to be someone else's; the whole point is to find your own way.

Joseph Campbell

We are realizing that in an interconnected world, not only are problems interwoven, but the solutions are interconnected as well, which means whatever we do to help ourselves and our world, we must do it together.

David Spangler

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

H. L. Mencken

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Abraham Maslow

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

Napoleon Hill

The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become.

James Allen

Now
That
All your worry
Has proved such an
Unlucrative
Business,
Why
Not
Find a better
Job.

Hafiz

What you see in yourself is what you see in the world.

Afghan proverb

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each 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 Kennedy

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.

Anton Chekhov

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

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

Madame De Stael

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

Jonathan Swift

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

Isaac B. Singer

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

Thich Nhat Hanh

Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall--think of it, ALWAYS.

Mahatma Gandhi

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Mohandas Gandhi

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.

Sydney Smith

If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart.

Arabian Proverb

Mastery of the world is achieved by letting things take their natural course.

Tao Te Ching

Consequently: he who wants to have right without wrong, order without disorder, does not understand the principles of heaven and earth. He does not know how things hang together.

Chuang Tzu

The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.

William Hazlitt

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can't do what you want till you know what you're doing.

Moshe Feldenkrais

True love is no game of the faint-hearted and the weak. It is born of strength and understanding.

Meher Baba

Our ordinary consciousness is not "natural," but an acquired product. This has given us both many useful skills and many insane sources of useless suffering.

Charles Tart

To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring to them the transformative power of our heart.

Jack Kornfield

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Carl Gustav Jung

Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we're frantic, life will be frantic. If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.

Marianne Williamson

Observation, not old age, brings wisdom.

Publius Syrus

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.

Mignon McLaughlin

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.

Edith Wharton

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

Dalai Lama

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.

G. K. Chesterton

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.

Bertolt Brecht

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melody Beattie

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Joanne Kathleen Rowling

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

Leo Tolstoy

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Henry David Thoreau

He who thinks to realize the hopes and desires of his youth when he is older is always deceiving himself, for every decade of a man's life possesses its own kind of happiness, its own hopes and prospects.

Johann Wofgang Von Goethe

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Plutarch

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

Epicurus

If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love, then love will wholeheartedly respond to you.

Marianne Williamson

If you see good in people, you radiate a harmonious loving energy which uplifts those who are around you. If you can maintain this habit, this energy will turn into a steady flow of love.

Annamalai Swami

A gift in season is a double favor to the needy.

Publilius Syrus

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Heraclitus

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

William James

In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me laugh.

W.H. Auden

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

Richard Bach

We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.

Ram Dass

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Gloria Steinem

The wise see in every form the divine form; in every heart they see the divine light shining.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Happiness is a quality of mind. It is something we possess within...If we do not have it within, nothing outside can give it to us.

Paramananda

The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of the divine.

St. John of the Cross

To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.

J. Krishnamurti

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Carl Jung

Thought held in mind reproduces after its kind, just like a seed in the ground that's nourished reproduces after its kind. In this moment, you are free to plant again.

Mary Manin Morrissey

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