Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
Herman Hesse
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Will Rogers
If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, from "God's Fingerprints on the Soul" in Handbook for the Soul
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.
W. R. Inge
Wisdom is the faculty of knowing what will be the effect of a cause.
Alfred A. Montapert
The world belongs to the Enthusiast who keeps cool.
William McFee
O let us live in joy, in love amongst those who hate! Among men who hate, let us live in love.
The Dhammapada
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
Walter Scott
And men below, and saints above:
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Everything is flowing. The Great River of Time takes everything with it, and nothing in this world remains unchanged or stabilized.
Mouni Sadhu
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James
I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
Helen Keller
Before the enlightenment, carry the water, till the soil. After enlightenment, carry the water, till the soil.
Zen teaching
To feel the full force of your mortality, and to open your heart entirely to it, is to allow to grow in you that all-encompassing, fearless compassion that fuels the lives of all those who wish truly to be of help to others.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Can we cover the earth in leather so it is soft wherever we go?
No.
So what can we do?
Cover our feet in leather.
Yes covering our feet in leather is equal to covering the earth in leather.
Likewise enemies are as limitless as space. All enemies cannot possibly be overcome. Yet if one can just overcome hatred this will be equal to overcoming all enemies. All that is unsatisfactory in this world all the fear and suffering that exists clinging to the 'I' has created it. What am I to do with this great demon?
To release myself from harm and to free all others from their suffering let me give myself away and love others as I love myself. If a problem can be solved why be unhappy? And if it can't be solved what is the use of being unhappy?Tibetan Buddhist teaching from the film The Cup
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
Henry Ford
Ambition without knowledge is like a boat on dry land.
Mr. Miyagi
Act the way you want to be and soon you will be the way you act.
Dr. Johnnie Coleman
Sometimes pain and illness is not meant to be removed. You can't second-guess God. Rather than praying for it to go away, it's often wiser to pray that you learn as much from it as you possibly can.
Stephen Levine
When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.
Susan Jeffers
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Will Rogers
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
Ursula LeGuin
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
The present never ages. Each moment is like a snowflake, unique, unspoiled, unrepeatable, and can be appreciated in its surprisingness.
Gail Sheehy
A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.
Henry Fielding
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961
Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.
Milton Erickson, M.D.
Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life…in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
Seneca
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei
In today's highly interdependent world, individuals and nations can no longer resolve many of their problems by themselves. We need one another. We must therefore develop a sense of universal responsibility…It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members, and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we live.
The Dalai Lama
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Mignon McLaughlin
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
It is when we ask for love less and begin giving it more that the secret of human love is revealed to us.
Leo Buscaglia
O let us live in joy, in love amongst those who hate! Among men who hate, let us live in love.
The Dhammapada
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
Indira Gandhi
Everything is flowing. The Great River of Time takes everything with it, and nothing in this world remains unchanged or stabilized.
Mouni Sadhu
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James
It is as though we have two selves or two natures or two wills with two contrary viewpoints…Your lower self sees you as the center of the universe–your higher self sees you as a cell in the body of humanity.
Peace Pilgrim
The greatest danger facing us is…our irrational fear of the unknown. But there is no such thing as the unknown. There are only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.
Captain Kirk from The Unauthorized Starfleet Meditation Manual
Do not care for doctrines; do not care for dogmas or sects or churches or temples. They count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is spirituality; and the more a man develops it, the more power he has for good. Earn that first, acquire that, and criticize no one; for all the doctrines and creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words or names or sects, but that it means spiritual realization.
Sri Ramakrishna
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?
W. Clement Stone
The result is not the point it is the effort to improve ourselves that is valuable. There is no end to this practice.
Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
Herman Hesse
If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, from "God's Fingerprints on the Soul" in Handbook for the Soul
Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
Arthur Rubinstein
Some people confuse acceptance with apathy but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish what can and cannot be helped; acceptance makes the distinction.
Arthur Gordon
The true wonder of the world is available everywhere, in the minutest parts of our bodies, in the vastness of the cosmos, and in the interconnectedness of these and all things.
Michael Stark
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself.
Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.
Vincent Van Gogh
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
Chinese Proverb
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage.
Sydney Smith
It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.
Vince Lombardi
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
John Wooden
Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.
Norman Vincent Peale
One has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when one plants shade trees under which one knows full well one will never sit.
Elton Trueblood
The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.
Anthony Robbins
The past is not only that which happened but also that which could have happened but did not.
Tess Gallagher
The spiritual journey is one of continually falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, looking sheepishly at God, and taking another step.
Sri Aurobindo
Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.
Bertrand Russell
Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
Sir Thomas Browne
One who is slow to anger is better than a warrior, and one who rules his spirit is better than one who takes a city.
King Solomon, Proverbs 16:32
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce
The time is now, the place is here. Stay in the present. You can do nothing to change the past, and the future will never come exactly as you plan or hope for.
Dan Millman
Only the light which we have kindled in ourselves can illuminate others.
Arthur Schopenhauer
When you are in a hole, stop digging.
Ian McIver
Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.
Goethe
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Gandhi
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Once our hearts are open, all existence appears naturally beautiful and harmonious.
Tarthang Tulku
When in despair, I 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 can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
To create peace, you have to be peaceful. The only way to stop war is to start from within yourself. You must do personal disarmament. The only way to get and stay peaceful is to concentrate on what brings you peace and resist the downward spiral of negative emotions that blames others for your lack of peace. Remember, that to which you give your attention expands.
Christiane Northrup, M.D.
Time has a wonderful way of weeding out the trivial.
Richard Ben Sapir
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
It is characteristic of the ego that it takes all that is unimportant as important and all that is important as unimportant.
Meher Baba in Discourses
The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.
Joyce Cary
Every relationship you have with another person reflects the relationship you have with yourself.
Alice DeVille
We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.
Thomas Merton
Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be
Expert in home-cosmography.Henry David thoreau
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Marcus Aurelius
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
John Adams
When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.
Bhagavad Gita
The promised land always lies on the other side of the wilderness.
Havelock Ellis
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.
Thich Nhat Hanh
None will improve your lot if you yourself do not.
Bertolt Brecht
People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals–that is, goals that do not inspire them.
Anthony Robbins
Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?
Frank Borman
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
He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion.
Chuang-Tsu
Before we can find new ways to prevent war, we have to understand why it is so popular.
Lawrence LeShan
Do good to thy Friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.
Benjamin Franklin
Observation, not old age, brings wisdom.
Publilius Syrus
Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light.
Raymond Holliwell
Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
Alan Keightly
Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.
Shakti Gawain
As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.
Henry Van Dyke
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
William James
Human kindness and compassion, that's my personal religion; maybe it is the universal religion.
The Dalai Lama
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Jean De La Bruyere
The act of contemplation creates the thing contemplated.
Isaac D'Israeli
Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
Marion Wright Edelman
It is human nature to hate him whom you have injured.
Tacitus
As one acts and conducts himself, so does he become.
Upanishads
The doer of good becomes good.
The doer of evil becomes evil.
One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.
The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
Edmund Burke
Forgetfulness of self is remembrance of God.
Bayazid Al-Bistami
Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.
Krishamurti
Happiness is not a reward–it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment–it is a result.
Robert G. Ingersoll
We first make our habits, then our habits make us.
John Dryden
As irrigators lead water where they want,
The Buddha
as archers make their arrows straight,
as carpenters carve wood,
the wise shape their minds.
Forgiveness is a rebirth of hope, a reorganization of thought, and a reconstruction of dreams. Once forgiving begins, dreams can be rebuilt. When forgiving is complete, meaning has been extracted from the worst of experiences and used to create a new set of moral rules and a new interpretation of life's events.
Beverly Flanigan
We are what our thoughts have made us: so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
Swami Vivekananda
As the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, let your heart be untroubled by judgements and let your kindness rain on all.
From Buddha's Little Instruction Book by Jack Kornfield
As more people achieve some degree of mental calm, insight, or the ability to transform negative emotions into positive ones, there will be a natural reinforcement of basic human values and consequently a great chance for peace and happiness for all.
The Dalai Lama
That which one wants to hide most are one's own faults, but on the contrary, they should not be hidden but rather acknowledged, if one has any real desire to be free from them. By acknowledging one's faults, one destroys them or finds a way to improve on them.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
When the laughter makes people glad they are alive, happy to be here, more conscious of love, heightened with eros, when it lifts their sadness and severs them from anger, that is sacred. When they are made bigger, made better, more generous, more sensitive, that is sacred.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.
John Adams paraphrasing Joseph Addison's play, Cato
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin
One hour of thoughtful solitude may nerve the heart for days of conflict–girding up its armor to meet the most insidious foe.
Percival
It is not a lucky word, this name "impossible"; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
Thomas Carlyle
Love should be as natural as living and breathing.
Mother Teresa
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
By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.
Immanuel Kant
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.
Martha Washington
You could have golden treasure buried beneath your feet, and walk over it again and again, yet never find it because you don't realize it is there. Just so, all beings live every moment in the city of the Divine, but never find the Divine because it is hidden by the veil of illusion.
Chandogya Upanishad VIII. iii.2
The good of the people is the highest law.
Cicero, De Legibus (52 B.C.E.)
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
By the accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love he may rule the world forever.
Lao-Tzu
The realization of Truth is brought about by perception, and not in the least by ten millions of facts.
Sankara
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
Life is not easy for any of us. We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
Marie Curie
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
What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.
Unknown
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw
We do not need to carry out grand things in order to show great love for God and for our neighbor. It is the intensity of love we put into our gestures that makes them into something beautiful.
Mother Teresa
I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.
Calvin Coolidge
Anger is mistaken as a friend because it brings extra energy, but the consequences are almost always negative.
The Dalai Lama
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
(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
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
What stay we on earth except to grow.
Robert Browning
If you want to be happy, be.
Aleksy Konstantinovich Tolstoy
…happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.
Dale Carnegie
Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
Taisen Deshimaru
Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Precept is instruction written in the sand. The tide flows over it, and the record is gone. Example is graven on the rock, and the lesson is not soon lost.
William E. Channing
The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.
Ram Dass
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
The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.
John Muir
The world and its beings are the spontaneous overflow of creative, imaginative energy.
Houston Smith
Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
William Shakespeare
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain
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
When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Martin Buber
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
Albert Schweitzer
Except your own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in your power.
Rene Descartes
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost
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
There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. True nobility is being superior to your former self.
Hindu Proverb
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
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
Henry Miller
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison
Perseverance is the ability to follow through on an idea long after the mood has passed.
Anonymous
In the power to change yourself is the power to change the world around you.
Anwar Sadat
Emotions are like waves. Watch them come and go in the vast ocean of existence.
Hindu saying
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 have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt
You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.
Clarence Darrow
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
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
Enjoy each moment. Appreciate what is. Be completely here and now. That is where eternity is found.
Peter McWilliams
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
William Blake
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into the kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The confidence we have in others stems directly from our confidence in ourselves.
Francois, Duc De La Rochefoucauld
We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature.
Marcus Aurelius
©2023 Tom Barrett