In spiritual practice…the goal is always the recovery of wholeness.
Thomas Matus
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.
Anne Lamott
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Tacitus
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein
To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.
Rudolf Steiner
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
Isaac Newton
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
R. Buckminster Fuller
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Howard Zinn
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl Sagan
The creation of someting new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Patience is the homely background on which most of the brilliant achievements are woven in beautiful harmony.
Allyn King Foster
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.
Eknath Easwaran
The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.
Teitoko Matsunaga
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.
Dalai Lama
The world is not to be put in order. The world is in order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
Henry Miller
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard
Everything you do should be done with peace. That is the best medicine for your body, mind, and soul. It is the most wonderful way to live.
Paramahansa Yogananda
In every seed is the promise of thousands of forests. But the seed must not be hoarded; it must give its intelligence to the fertile ground. Through its giving, its unseen energy flows into material manifestation.
Deepak Chopra in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Whatever a person's mind dwells on intensely and with firm resolve, that is exactly what he becomes.
Shankaracharya
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
Real activity is combined with calmness which can't be ruffled. It is a balance of mind which is never disturbed, whatever happens. Only when the mind is calm and collected is the whole of its energy spent in doing good work.
Swami Vivekananda
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Fun is fundamental. There is no way around it. You absolutely must have fun. Without fun, there is no enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, there is no energy. Without energy, there are only shades of gray.
Doug Hall, from Jump Start Your Brain
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Emotions are like waves. Watch them come and go in the vast ocean of existence.
Hindu saying
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
attributed to Chief Seattle
The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
Will Garcia
In the power to change yourself is the power to change the world around you.
Anwar Sadat
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.
Helen Keller
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.
Harold V Melchert
You want to know how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair.
Elie Wiesel
Imperfection is not our personal problem–it is a natural part of existing.
Tara Brach
Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.
Ovid
If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a hundred years, educate people.
Chinese proverb
What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard for posterity.
Richter
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat
James Russell Lowell
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
Thich Nhat HanhDo unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
Linus Pauling
Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.
Alan Moore
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
Without deviation progress is not possible.
Frank Zappa
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
Og Mandino
Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
Chuang Tzu
Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.
Cicero
Whenevere anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
René Descartes
Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.
Beverly Sills
There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. True nobility is being superior to your former self.
Hindu Proverb
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Ryun
The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching.
Anson Dorrance
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not sacrifice if you love what you're doing.
Mia Hamm
When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson
And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.
Ayrton Senna
Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.
Wayne Dyer
There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.
J. G. Holland
Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
William Shakespeare
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
Paulo Coelho
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Perseverance is the ability to follow through on an idea long after the mood has passed.
Anonymous
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
Miguel Ruiz
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
Og Mandino
There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say 'be yourself' since you do not know yourself. Just be.
Nisargadatta
Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
Taisen Deshimaru
Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.
William James
When the mind is possessed of reality, it feels tranquil and joyous even without music or song, and it produces a pure fragrance even without incense or tea.
Hung Tzu-ch'eng
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
Joseph Campbell
Half of the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need…I live more simply now, and with more peace.
Richard E. Byrd, explorer
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
Alan Watts
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.
Muriel Rukeyser
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination
Voltaire
What stay we on earth except to grow.
Robert Browning
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.
Dalai Lama
(Infinite Love) is a weapon of matchless potency. It is the Summum Bonum of life. It is an attribute of the brave. In fact it is their all. It does not come within the reach of the coward. It is no wooden or lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving force. It is the special attribute of the heart.
Mohandes Gandhi
If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit; but whatever you do, don't wobble.
Ummon
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
William Butler Yeats
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
Camille Pissarro
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
Emotions are like waves. Watch them come and go on the vast ocean of existence.
Hindu proverb
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Imperfection is not our personal problem–it is a natural part of existing.
Tara Brach
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
Rabindranath Tagore
What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard for posterity.
Richter
We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of becoming the perfect love.
Tom Robbins
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses
Leonardo da Vinci
Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
Linus Pauling
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
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung
Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.
Alan Moore
It must be obvious…that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.
Alan Watts
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham Lincoln
There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.
Barbara Amiel
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
Milton Berle
The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth.
Ramakrishna
Meditation is to be aware of what is going on--in our bodies, in our feelings, in our minds, and in the world...Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. Please do not think we have to be solemn to meditate. In fact, to meditate well, we have to smile a lot.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Play consists of whatever a body is not obligated to do.
Mark Twain
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi
Nature gave us one tongue and two ears so we could hear twice as much as we speak.
Epictetus
You can't control things by being nervous about it.
Tina Fey
The Dalai Lama
Anger is mistaken as a friend because it brings extra energy, but the consequences are almost always negative.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Mother Teresa
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
Elbert Hubbard
There is a destiny that makes us brothers: none goes his way alone,
Edwin Markham
All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which…is within the souls of men.
Black Elk
Here it is–right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.
Huang Po
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Teresa
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
Jacob Bronowski
Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.
James Burke
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William James
No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important. For it will be by those small things that you shall be judged.
Mahatma Gandhi
The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
Charles Swindoll
Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.
Henry Ford
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
One of the most lasting pleasures you can experience is the feeling that comes over you when you genuinely forgive an enemy–whether he knows it or not.
O. A. Battista
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
Philip Pullman
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Robert Heinlein
Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
Hans Margolius
Success is not built on what we accomplish for ourselves. Its foundation lies in what we do for others.
Danny Thomas
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
The mature person pays attention to what is happening in the innermost self.
Tzu Ssu
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Erich Fromm
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The habit of viewing things cheerfully, and of thinking about things hopefully, may be made to grow in us like any other habits.
Samuel Smiles
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Aristotle
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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
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
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mohandas Gandhi
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
Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.
Brian Tracy
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
Ultimately, human intentionality is the most powerful evolutionary force on this planet.
George Leonard
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
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
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
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
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao Tzu
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
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
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
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Peter F. Drucker
If you understand, things are as they are.
Gensha
If you do not understand, things are as they are.
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.
Leo Rosten
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.
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.
John Burroughs
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
We go here, there, to this place, to that one, always looking for happiness that is there inside.
Satchidananda
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
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
Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace?
Eckhart Tolle
Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.
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
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
Mae West
There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
Carl Jung
All great changes are preceded by chaos.
Deepak Chopra
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
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell
When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person don't be surprised if they learn their lesson.
Will Rogers
©2023 Tom Barrett