Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
Good judgment comes from experience... and a lot of that comes from bad judgment!
Will Rogers
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mohandas Gandhi
When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson
Don't feel sorry for yourself if you have chosen the wrong road - turn around!
Edgar Cayce
Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.
Helen Keller
Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself.
Rumi
If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition;
Padmasambhava
if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.
This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.
Philip K. Dick
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A. Heinlein
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
Ursula K. Le Guin
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Madeleine L'Engle
Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.
Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
Basho
Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.
Isaiah Berlin
Finding inner peace, this is a point of no return. You can never go back into the struggle. The struggle is over now because you will to do the right thing, and you don't need to be pushed into it.
Peace pilgrim
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller
It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.
Chinese Proverb
To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach.
Sissela Bok
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
Abraham Lincoln
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Epictetus
It's funny how most people love the dead. Once you're dead you're made for life.
Jimi Hendrix
You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
Saint Bernard
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
Edgar Allan Poe
Evil is not an actual substance, but absence of good; just as darkness is nothing but absence of light.
Abba Evagrius
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.
David Starr Jordan
True peace is not the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."
Mary Anne Radmacher
Treat those who are good with goodness,
Lao-Tzu
And also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
Barbara Tuchman
Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life.
Jackie Robinson
Associate with those who help you believe in yourself.
Brooks Robinson
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
Yogi Berra
If you are called to be a streetsweeper, you should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls.
Sam Keen
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
Garrison Keillor
You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success - or are they holding you back
Clement Stone
We are fallible. We certainly haven't attained perfection. But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving.
Carlos P. Romulo
Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.
Eknath Easwaran
We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
Tom Robbins
Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.
Miguel de Cervantes
Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
Swami Sivananda
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Baruch Spinoza
Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life.
Andrew Bonar Law
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs (2/24/1955-10/5/2011)
This is the only meditation I know.
Bokuju
While I eat, I eat.
While I walk, I walk.
And while I feel sleepy, I sleep.
Whatsoever happens, happens.
I never interfere.
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.
Dalai Lama
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Shunryu SuzukiOne reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.
Anthony Robbins
The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in the hearts of men.
Arthur Keith
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Ralph W. Emerson
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Doing is the great thing. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time they will come to like doing it.
John Ruskin
If it is not right, do not do it.
Marcus Aurelius
Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference -- in our own lives and those of others.
Sharon Salzberg
Never confuse motion with action.
Benjamin Franklin
The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
Joseph Addison
One is never as fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. 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
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
Francis Bacon
All sentient beings developed through natural selection in such a way that pleasant sensations serve as their guide, and especially the pleasure derived from sociability and from loving our families.
Charles Darwin
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
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Carl Jung
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Goethe
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
When confusion reigns, it is easy to remember this truth: I am not my thoughts, nor my emotions, nor my sensory perceptions, nor my experiences. I am not the contents of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which everything happens. I am consciousness. I am the Present. I Am.
Eckhart Tolle
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
You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about...
Richard Feynman
The most difficult thing of all—yet the most essential—is to love life, even when you suffer, because life is all.
Leo Tolstoy
Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.
William Shakespeare
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and a willingness to remain vulnerable.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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
No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.
Mother Teresa
Be wise in the use of time. The question in life is not how much time do we have. The question is: what shall we do with it?
Anna Robertson Brown
Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman.
People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.
Bill Cosby
What we think, we become.
Buddha
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
Dag Hammarskjold
Everything has a bright and dark side to it. Those who see only the dark side of things bring sorrow and pain upon themselves. To those who are able to see at the same time the bright side of it, every day is a good day.
Yunmen
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.
Aldous Huxley
The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
Helen Keller
No one is a failure who is enjoying life.
William Feather
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
Max Erhmann in Desiderata
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
All I can do is engage with complete sincerity. Then whatever happens, there is no regret.
The Dalai Lama
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
Variously attributed to Epictetus or Epicurus
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
Winston Churchill
How can I be still? By flowing with the stream.
Lao Tzu
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
Friedrich Nietzsche
Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
Mohandas Gandhi
If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change.
John A. Simone, Sr.
I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.
Henry David Thoreau
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. The intellect can never lead one to a complete insight. One has to use one's entire being to come into contact with the truth.
Huineng
Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.
Zoroaster
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson
Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling "I am". The "I am" is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the "I am" will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.
Lillian Smith
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescibably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller
Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
Horace
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
Mohandas Gandhi
The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.
D. H. LawrenceIt's impossible to change the past or the present: you can only accept all that as it is. But you can tend to the causes of a better future.
Rick Hanson in Buddha's Brain
I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now.
Peter McWilliamsNo one is to be called an enemy, all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm. You have no enemy except yourselves.
St. Francis of Assisi
Do not rely on meditation to avoid problems. Without problems the seeking spirit could go mad. Therefore the sage says: reach liberation in the middle of turbulences.
Kyong Ho
Imperfection is not our personal problem - it is a natural part of existing.
Tara Brach
But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.
Colin Powell
Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
John Ruskin
To be temperate is the greatest excellence. And wisdom is speaking the truth and acting with knowledge in accordance with nature.
Heracleitus
Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.
Rabindranath Tagore
Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.
Chogyam Trungpa
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.
Martha Washington
Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
Leon Joseph Suenens
When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.
Chinese proverb
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Often attributed to Helen Keller. Also attributed to Joseph Addison.
There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.
Clare Boothe Luce
The real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
PlatoSelf-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection -- or compassionate action.
Daniel Goleman
There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty.
Matthew Fox
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
Marianne Williamson
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Peter F. Drucker
How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
Wayne Dyer
The person resolute in the Way must from the beginning never lose sight of it, whether in a place of calm or in a place of strife. Beware of clinging to quiet places and shunning those where there is disturbance.
Daikaku
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
Malcolm X
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border.
Pablo Casals
We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act or our lives can contain simplicity and precision and thus can have tremendous beauty and dignity.
Chogyam Trungpa
I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
Benjamin Franklin
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
James Madison
We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that.
Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
T.S. Eliot
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Soren Kierkegaard
We can sense the ever-changing waves around us, and breathe and relax. We can rest in the eternal present, the stillpoint. We can learn that no matter what happens, we are home.
Jack Kornfield
If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.
Jim Carrey
When we act out of our negativity, the effect is like carving it into stone. The imprint remains for a long, long time.
Genpo Merzel
It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying 'really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.
Quentin Crisp
We are fallible. We certainly haven't attained perfection. But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving.
Carlos P. Romulo
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Patanjali
When mortals are alive, they worry about death. When they're full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. But sages don't consider the past. And they don't worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
Bodhidharma
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.
Deepak Chopra
If you let go a little, you have a little happiness; if you let go a lot, you have a lot of happiness; if you let go completely, you will be free.
Ajahn Chah
In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.
John Ruskin
We can make flowers out of arrows. Every time you smile away your irritation and anger, you achieve a victory for yourself and for humanity.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The spiritual journey is one of continuous learning and purification. When you know this, you become humble.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
Sri Swami Sivananda
Develop a mind that is vast like the water, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle, or harm. Rest in a mind like vast water.
Buddha
Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
Henri Federick Amiel
No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.
Marilyn Ferguson
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Albert Camus
The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real estate, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.
Bertrand Russell
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
Leonardo da Vinci
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
Swami Vivekananda
There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.
Aldous Huxley
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson
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. BlavatskyPerhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
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