"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
- Albert Einstein
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes
to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
- Oscar Wilde
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."
- Thomas Szasz
"People like this…they're…you can't tell them that there's anything wrong with them because if you try to, let's say, you try to say, 'You have symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder,' they will flip it right on you, throw it in your face, and say, 'Nope, you're the one with the disorder.' It's infuriating and very frustrating to deal with."
- Professor Barbara Oakley
when interviewed on Coast to Coast AM on her book
Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend
"A man dies when he refuses to accept what is true."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"It is not our abilities that show what we truly are, it is our choices."
- Professor Dumbledor in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
"Ever live with a cat? No, I see you haven't. How can you have the gall not to like something you don't know anything about? Wait till you've lived with a cat, then tell me what you think. Until then...well, who told you you were entitled to an opinion?"
- From Robert A. Heinlein's "A Tenderfoot in Space"
"Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain."
- John F. Kennedy
"I throw the butt in a half empty big gulp. Or is it a half full big gulp? Either way, it's shit now. Would you like a drink?"
- Aslynn
"I had a kind of serenity, a new maturity...I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not--more important now was for me to love them. feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving. "
- Beverly Sills
"Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything."
- Floyd Dell
"To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just."
- Heraclitus
"The tension between reality and what is honorable and right can be truly terrible."
- Sophie
Roshi responded, “That’s the wrong attitude. If they knock you down, you get up. If they knock you down again, get up. No matter how many times they knock you down, get up again. That is how you should go.”
- Source...forgotten...
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
- Albert Einstein
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
- Leo Tolstoy
"Sometimes, after learning to walk, I find my shoes have been tied tog fether."
- Aslynn
"When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half."
- Gracie Allen
"'Let me help.' A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words over 'I love you.'"
- Captain James T. Kirk
The City on the Edge of Forever
"What makes me really pissed off in the kitchen? What makes me explode? Lies.
A chef can overcook a scallop, they can overcook a fillet of beef, they can overcook a turbot. But what they can't do is lie about it. That really upsets me. It's not the fact that they're lying to me; they're lying to the customers, too, and I won't have that."
- Roasting in Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay
"Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love.... The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love."
- Mother Teresa
"7 You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind; but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is."
- Galatians Chapter 5 Versus 7 thru 10
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
- Beverly Sills
"The most offensive thing you can do is disagree with another's perspective."
- Aslynn
"I am a fucked up mess who happens to be highly functional."
- Sophie
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
- Albert Schweitzer
"Three passions have governed my
life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living."
- Bertrand Russell
"My candle burns at both its ends;
It will not last the night;
But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light."
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities."
- Albert Einstein
"Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions."
- Richard Bach
"One ought, every day at least, to hear
a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible,
to speak a few reasonable words."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Humans cover themselves, and protect themselves, and when someone says, 'You are pushing my buttons,' it is not exactly true. What is true is that you are touching a wound in his mind, and he reacts because it hurts."
"How can you relate with people who are emotionally wounded and sick with fear?"
- The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
- Chinese Proverb
"Failure is the foundation of truth. It teaches us what isn't true, and that is a great beginning. To fear failure is to fear the possibility of truth."
- Joan Chittister
"Try to love someone who you want to
hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never
expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe
it."
- Margaret Cho
“The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.”
- Rumi
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate.
And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
- Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have
others."
- Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
"The difference between a moral man
and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when
it has worked and he has not been caught."
- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956), 'Prejudices: Fourth Series,' 1924
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared
with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which
determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
- Henry David Thoreau
"P. S. R. Parallel Synchronized Randomness. An interesting brain rarity and our subject for today. Two people walk in opposite directions at the same time and then they make the same decision at the same time. Then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it. Basically, in a mathematical world these two little guys will stay looped for the end of time. The brain is the most complex thing in the universe and it's right behind the nose."
- Stephane from the film The Science of Sleep
"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
- Kurt Vonnegut
"O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.”
- Rumi
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."
- Christopher Morley
"Leave what you are doing. Seat yourself. Repose. Set your spine upright. Relax your eyes. Gaze at the horizon without focusing on anything in particular. Sweep the infinite with a mild glance. You are part of the universe, son of the sky, of the earth and of time. Brother of the sun and the moon. Your life is related to everything you see. You are part of it. You have all you need to be happy, so do not search further from yourself."
- From Path of the Warrior by Lucas Estrella Schultz
"I am a shepherd who, with his people, has begun to learn a beautiful and difficult truth: our Christian faith requires that we submerge ourselves in this world."
- Oscar Romero
"Life brings to you exactly what you need. There is perfect justice in hell. There is nothing to blame. We can even say that our suffering is a gift. If you just open your eyes and see what is around you, it's exactly what you need to clean you poison, to heal your wounds, to accept yourself, and to get out of hell."
- The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
"You are always free to love. If your choice is to be in a relationship, and your partner is playing the same game, what a gift! When your relationship is completely out of hell, you will love yourself so much that you don't need each other at all. By your own will, you get together and create beauty. And what the two of you are going to create is a dream of heaven."
- The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
"You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.
Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain
you don't have anything to learn from them.
You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past."
- From Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
"Before we love with our heart, we already love with our imagination."
- Louise Colet
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works."
- John Gaule
“…one cannot lodge in ‘if.’”
- Rumi
“Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you are doing, and how they are doing, and keep your practices together.”
- Rumi
"When we're going through klesha withdrawal, it helps to know we're on the right tack. Shantideva remarks that--just as foolish rivals endure physical pain, sleeplessness, and even death--he will go through the anguish of detox to cease being a slave to his kleshas. he will not lose heart and give up because of pain or fear."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
“When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you are not here, I cannot go to sleep. Praise God for these two insomnias and the difference between them.”
- Rumi
"If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”
- Rumi
“I am burning. If anyone lacks tinder, let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.”
- Rumi
"I have the heart of a lion, the memory of an elephant, and the soul of a beekeeper...an interesting combination."
- Aslynn
"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers."
- William James
"Bodhisattvas sometimes have to back off. This doesn't mean giving up. It means finding out what we can do with enthusiasm. This is something we have to experiment with. We discover for ourselves what's too tight and what's too loose; what brings us benefit and what causes further harm."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"If in the teachings it is said
That one who in his thought intends
To give away a little thing but then draws back
Will take rebirth among the hungry ghosts,
How can I expect a happy destiny
If from my heart I summon
Wandering beings to the highest bliss,
But then deceive and let them down?"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 4.5 and 4.6 by Shantideva
"If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you always got."
- From Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge by Geoffrey M. Bellman
"...there comes a time...when every lonely little boy must learn how to dance."
- Madame de Pompadour from the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace"
"To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over."
- From the novel Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
"It's Thanksgiving. Some people bake pies. We bake ourselves."
- From the television series That 70's Show
"The world is not small. You are."
- From the television series Heroes
"One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an Angel."
- Madame de Pompadour from the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace"
"You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way."
- FromThe Neverending Story by Michael Ende
"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possilbe and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From ths plae the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"'Take it easy, you little fool,' the werewolf growled. 'When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.'"
- FromThe Neverending Story by Michael Ende
"We're old, son, much too old. Lived long enough. Seen too much. When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away, whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything's empty, nothing is real, nothing matters."
- Morla fromThe Neverending Story by Michael Ende
"There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars. And people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. You see it in their faces. First the little flicker of searching, and then when they look at you, you're just a kind of an object. You don't count. You're not what they're loking for. You're not on TV."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. It's this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"He was ready to resign. Teaching dull conformty to hateful students wasn't what he wanted to do."
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"Stay vigilant: There are a thousand dogmatists who want to skin your cat."
- Aslynn
"The practice of confession is an excellent way to move beyond guilt and self-deception. It relies on the view that neurosis, while it may feel monolithic or immutable, is essentially transitory and insubstantial. It is just very strong energy that we mistakenly identify as a solid and permanent 'me.' Confessing, like making offerings and prostrations, helps us let go of this fixed version of who we are."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"All the harm, in short, my ego does
To its advantage and to others' cost,
May all of it descend upon itself,
To its own hurt--to others' benefit."
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva
8.165 by Shantideva
"So many are the wants and tendencies
of beings,
Even Buddha could not please them all--
Of such an evil man as me no need to speak!
Better to give up such wordly thoughts.
People scorn the poor who have no wealth,
They also criticize the rich who have it,
What pleasure can derive from keeping company
With people such as these, so difficult to please?"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 8.22 and 8.23 by Shantideva
"How could we be smack-dab in the middle of a heated debate and not really see wht's goin on? A metaphor might help. It's akin to going fly fishing for the first time with an experienced angler. your buddy keeps telling you to cast your fly six feet upstream from that brown trout 'just out there.' Only you cant see a brown trout 'just out there.' He can. That's because he knows what to look for. You *think* you do."
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking
when stakes are high
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzler
"If we continually renew and break our commitments, we will long be barred from progressing along the bodhisattva path. We won't, however, be barred forever; ...we will not wander endlessly in misery. The notion of eternal damnation is foreign to Buddhist thinking. Some states of mind may seem endless, but even the worst suffering is impermanent and there is always a way out."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"don't take me for granted."
- Ben, age 10, from Always Kiss Me Goodnight compiled by J.S. Salt
"A content man has no need for subterfuge."
- Scott "Lets Ride" Brinkmeyer
"I'm reminded of a Native American man from the Taos Pueblo called Little Joe Gomez. In the early seventies, he met some people who were practicing complete silence. They were wearing chalkboards around their necks in case they needed to communicate. This got Little Joe laughing. When someone asked him what was so funny, he said, 'Very easy not to talk; very difficult to talk mindfully.'"
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"...our ordinary human suffering has value. It can humble us and teach us compassion. The pain we go through while changing old habits is not only worth tolerating, it's worth celebrating!"
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"Their weapons and my body--
Both are causes of my suffering!
They their weapons drew, while I held out my body.
Who then is more worthy of my anger?"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 6.43 by Shantideva
"When the teachings tell us to 'make friends with our emotions,' they mean to become more attentive and get to know them better. Being ignorant about emotions only makes matters worse; feeling guilty or ashamed of them does the same. Struggling against them is equally nonproductive. The only way to dissolve their power is with our whole hearted, intelligent attention."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath"
- Lyrics from On the Radio sang by Regina Spektor
"Think about it, there must be higher
love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is a wasted time"
- Lyrics from Higher Love sang by Steve Winwood
"The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel, and misrepresentation."
- C. Northcote Parkinson
"Consider the impact crucial conversations can have on your relationships. Could failed crucial conversations lead to failed relationships? As it turns out, when you ask the average person what causes couples to break up, he or she usually suggests that it's due to differences of opinion. You know, people have different theories about how to manage their finances, spice up their love lives, or rear their chldren. In truth, everyone argues about important issues. But not everyone splits up. It's how you argue that matters."
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking
when stakes are high
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzler
"So this is one of my dearest friends. This is Maynard from Tool, and uh, I call him up when I'm feeling terrible and he sings me lullabies."
- Tori Amos
"What you learn is that 'crucial conversations' transform people and relationships. They are anything but transacted; they create an entirely new level of bonding. They produce what Buddhism calls 'the middle way'--not a compromise between two opposites on a straight-line continuum, but a higher middle way, like the apex of a triangle... When you produce something with another person that is truly creative, it's one of the most powerful forms of bonding there is."
- Stephen R. Covey
From the forward of Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are
high
"A man walked into a fortune teller's tent. When the fortune teller saw him, she started laughing, so he hit her. Why? He was striking a happy medium."
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
- William Arthur Ward
"The bodhisattva path is not about being a 'good' person or accepting the status quo. It requires courage and a willingness to keep growing."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"To cover all the earth with sheets
of hide--
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But simply wrap some leather around your feet,
And it's as if the whole earth had been covered!"
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 5.13 by Shantideva
"Man...the world aint supposed to work like this. I mean, maybe you don't know that, but this aint the way it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to be able to do my job without asking you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything's supposed to be different than what it is."
- Danny Glover's character from the movie Grand Canyon
"There is a repeating pattern in our behavior that we somehow seem to miss. When we're challenged, our habitual reactions are especially predictable: we strike out or withdraw, scream or weep, become arrogant or feel inadequate. These strategies for seeking security and avoiding discomfort only increase our uneasiness. But alas, they seem addictive; even thoug the results are unsatisfactory, we use them again and again."
- No Time to Loose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chodron
"Just so, and for the benefit of
beings,
I will also have this attitude of mind,
And in those precepts, step by step,
I will abide and train myself."
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 3.24 by Shantideva
"For if you will accept me, I will
be
A benefit to all, and freed from fear.
I'll go beyond the evils of my past,
And ever after turn my face from them."
- Bodhicharyavatara, The Way of the Bodhisattva 2.9 by Shantideva
"Delenn does not walk in the same world that you and I walk in. She does not see the same world that you and I see. In her world we are better than we are, we care more than we care, we act towards each other with compassion. I much prefer her world to that of my own and I will not allow anything to threaten that."
- Lennier from the TV Series Babylon 5
"The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha--which is to demean oneself."
- From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?"
"Whatever I feel like I wanna do. Gosh!"
- Napoleon Dynamite
"You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness...
...I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
- From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
"Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves."
- Bonaro W. Overstreet
"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Real life is a special case."
- Unknown mathematician
"I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life"
- Pink
"When the shoe fits, we forget the foot."
- Zen saying from Water Bears No Scars
"Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
Lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you."
- Roman Tombstone
"What is need compared to the path?"
- Kosh from the series Babylon 5
"See, we are what we pretend to be because we pretend to be what we really are. The act is not an act."
- From the Steven Soderbergh film Schizopolis
"Don't feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the body carry different loads and require different attentions. Too often we put saddlebags on Jesus and let the donkey run loose in the pasture. Don't make the body do what the spirit does best, and don't put a big load on the spirit that the body could carry easily."
- Rumi
"Happiness is an inexpressibly misleading and temporary thing, decides nothing; the true stations of joy are on the road which lies through simple endurance."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained to distinguish good from evil."
- Hebrews Chapter 5 Verse 12
"Offering him the conventional wisdom, her advice had no effect on his pace. He knew that his method of making it through the labyrinth's path was right for him and he could do nothing else. The true seeker heeds rigid rules defining how God should be approached, as carefully as a boy listens to his younger sister. Which is to say, not at all."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Recognition of what you are doing, where you are--both physically and emotionally--occurs at the stage of illumination. It is here that a sense of being grounded comes into play. The runner can say, 'Yes, I have made a mess of my life in all the following ways...but be that as it may, her I am moving along this trail, improving with every step, not languishing in self-pity on the couch, advancing through this difficult time.' This indisputable fact that you are moving forward, even if only physically, adds momentum to your emotional healing."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is by saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
- Alexander Pope
"As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
- Nelson Mandela
“Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.”
- Rumi
"Perhaps it is not just that our conception of God changes, but that he and the way he relates to us changes as well."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"First, I am born. Then the trouble begins."
- Fletcher Munson
"I can make sense out of yesterday. Can you understand the power of that?"
- Elmo Oxygen
(from the Steven Soderbergh film Schizopolis)
"No one purifies another."
- The Buddha
"Another runner, in speaking of the post-marathon blues, suggested finding a new goal, another marathon, and another reason to train. This is a typical reaction to loss. Find a new lover to replace the old one. I suggest that you allow time to absorb these losses, to live for a while in the empty spaces that remain after the loss. God's presence can be detected all over this barren territory."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"Sooner or later, I get me up this
track.
Gotta do what it is that I do and then I'm - coming back.
Got sun in my face, sleeping rough up the road.
I'll tell you all about it, when I get home.
Gonna roll up the sidewalk, I'm gonna tear up the ground.
Comin' round to meet you, The long way round."
- The Long Way Round by Stereophonics
"You are never too old to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot
"If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine"
- Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine
"True knowledge lies in knowing how to live."
- Gracian
"Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air."
- I Corinthians 9:26
"Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it."
- E. B. White
"Know that for every run in which I describe a transcendent experience there were many more that were either ordinary or, from an athlete's perspective, utter failures. Both spiritual and physical conditioning can be difficult processes. Accept each run for what it is, remembering that this is a spiritual practice that, like any discipline, requires persistence through episodes of success and seeming failure."
- From Running the Spiritual Path by Roger D. Joslin
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
- Ernest Hemingway
"The moment between before and after is called Truth."
- Katagiri Roshi
"'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.'"
- Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
"There's no point in translating all of the old Chinese texts--not if you're serious about understanding real Zen. The sound of the rain needs no translation."
- Morimoto Roshi
"When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment."
- Alan Watts
"I went to the mountain seeking enlightenment
There was no enlightenment on the mountain.
In desolation
I cried out and there came an echo.
I shouted again.
The echo came again."
- Soen Nakagawa
"No snowflake falls in an inappropriate place."
- Zen saying
"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."
- Alan Watts
"The practice is what you throw yourself into. Unconditionally. The practice is the teacher. Your practice is your teacher."
- Maurine Stuart
"Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement."
- Jack Kornfield
"Don't go back to sleep."
- Jalal Ad-Din Rumi
"Human beings understand too much. But what they understand is just opinion. Like a dog barking. American dog say, 'Woof, woof.' Korean dog say, 'Mung, mung.' Polish dog say, 'How, how.' So which dog barking is correct? That is human beings barking, not dogs barking. If dog and you become one hundred percent one, then you know the sound of barking. This is Zen teaching."
- Seung Sahn
"Bring me a pearl from the bottom of the sea without getting wet."
- Zen Koan
"Talk does not cook rice."
- Chinese Proverb
"You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion."
- Meister Eckhart
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
"Part of getting a second chance is taking responsibility for the mess you made in the first place."
- Jack Bauer from the television series 24
"With gentleness overcome anger,
With generosity overcome meanness,
With truth overcome deciet."
- The Buddha
"The world is on fire!
And are you laughing?
You are deep in the dark.
Will you not ask for light?"
- The Buddha
"Handwriting? You must be joking. After ten years of word processing, I can't even do handwriting anymore. I know I ought to be able to: handwriting is supposed to be one of those things like chopsticks: once you get the hang of it, it never really deserts you. The thing is that I've had much more practice with chopsticks than with pens, so no, I'm not handwriting."
- Douglas Adams
"What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses."
- From The Cider House Rules by John Irving
"Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it."
- Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
"The officer's next point was that I wasn't in the universe, I was in England, a point that has been made to me before. I gave up trying to win an argument and agreed to everything so that we could just get out of there."
- Douglas Adams
"[That's] More information about stuff I have already forgotten and more than I ever figured I would care about."
- A respected co-worker who wishes to remain anonymous
"Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."
- From The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
"The thought of Aslynn is not Aslynn."
- A somewhat reworded Buddhist saying
"The fact is that I don't know where ideas come from, or even where to look for them. Nor does any writer. This is not quite true, in fact. If you were writing a book on the mating habits of pigs, you'd probably pick up a few goodish ideas by hanging around a barnyard in a plastic mac, but if fiction is your line, then the only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it."
- Douglas Adams
"You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'"
- Douglas Adams
"Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent thirty-five-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner. In fact it's not so much a country as such, more a sort of thin crust of semi-demented civilisation caked around the edge of a vast, raw wilderness, full of heat and dust and hopping things."
- Douglas Adams
"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
- Douglas Adams
"A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?"
- Zen Koan
"Cooking, eating, sleeping, every deed of everyday life is nothing else than the Great Matter. realize this! So we extend tender care with a worshipping heart even to such beings as beasts and birds--but not only to beasts, not only to birds, but to insects too, ok? Even to grass, to one blade of grass, even to dust, to one speck of dust. Sometimes I bow to the dust..."
- Soen Nakagawa
"Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one."
- Turkish Proverb
"Asking people about their opinions is a very good way of making friends. Telling them about your own opinions can also work, but not always quite as well."
- Douglas Adams
"If God is a DJ, Life is a dance floor, Love is the Rhythm, You are the music."
- Pink
"God whose love and joy are everywhere can't come to visit unless you aren't there."
- Angelus Silesius
"Like the arrowsmith who turns his arros straight and true, a wise person makes his character straight and true."
- The Buddha
"The fundamental delusion of reality is to suppose that I am here and you are out there."
- Yasutani
"If you never want to see the face of hell, when you come home from work every night, dance with your kitchen towel, and if you're worried about waking up your family, take off your shoes."
- Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav
"Zen does not teach, it points." - D. T. Suzuki
"It often happens that I awake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember I am the pope."
- Pope John XXIII
"The number of hours you meditate, the number of workshops you attend, and the number of New Age thinkers and writers you can quote do not measure your connection with Spirit. Spiritual snobbery is just another way the ego tries to run our lives rather than surrender our direction to God."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"A Hawaiian healter once told me that one of the worst soul diseases a person can have is something the Hawaiians call 'stink eye.' This is the condition of seeing the world and the people in it through the negative viewpoint of your own misery. 'If you have stink-eye, you miss everything,' the healer said, laughing."
- From True Balance by Sonia Choquette
"Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: 'Does this path have a heart?' If it does, the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use."
- Don Juan
"After a public reading Bernie Glassman gave,
a woman in the audience stood up and asked:
'What does it take to live in the Now?'
The master answered:
'Would anyone who is not living in the Now please stand up?"
Zen Mondo
"And every person in your life here is a reflection of who you are. You never see them; you only see what you are in them. Htey are mirrors to you, faceless mirrors, and they orbit around you."
"And love should not be a condition of who you are. You shouldn't love someone because they believe the same things you believe but because they're a refelction of who you are; it enriches them."
"What if the whole world hates you, 'Silly buffoon, how could you listen to something so incredulous?' And then look at their life; what are their demons?"
- From The Ancient Schools of Wisdom: A Selection of Teachings from Ramtha
"There are many trails up the mountain, but in time they all reach the top."
- Anya Setori
"I have just three things to teach: Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world."
- Tao Te Ching
"I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong."
- Vita Sackville-West
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."
- From Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
"Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third."
- Marge Piercy
"Forgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful behavior. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling victimized and martyred. Rather it is the finishing of old business that allows us to experience the present, free of contamination from the past."
- Joan Borysenko
"The only real valuable thing is intuition."
- Albert Einstein
"A man takes responsibility for his actions, right or wrong. He accepts the consequences and lives with them. Every day."
- Command Odama from Battlestar Galactica
"I hate being tickled. Sure, it makes me laugh, but when I get tickled, I get pissed off. I'm like a monkey when I get tickled."
- Tara Reid
"There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy."
- Anonymous
"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work."
- Rita Mae Brown
“Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.”
- Carlos Castaneda
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost
"You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation."
- Marian Wright Edelman
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
- Anais Nin
"So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Make decisions, don't let them make you."
- Aslynn
"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast."
- Unknown
"Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone."
- Paul Tillich
"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."
- Henry David Thoreau
"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves."
- Eric Hoffer
"We call ourselves civilized yet we're the only species that has to practice being alive."
- Aslynn
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say."
- Marshall McLuhan
"An angel is a belief with wings and arms that can carry you. It's not to be afraid of. And if it can't hold you up, seak for something new."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"Failing in love isn't the same as not loving. It doesn't let you off the hook, it doesn't mean you're free to not love."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"You can't live in the world without an idea of the world. But it's living that makes the ideas, you can't wait for a theory but you have to have a theory."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"In your experience of the world how do people change?"
"Well, it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly then plunges a huge, filthy hand in. He grabs hold of your bloody tubes and I slipped to evade his grasp but He squeeses hard, he insists. He pulls and pulls till all of your innards are yanked out. And the pain, can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled, torn. It's up to you to do the stitching."
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough."
- William Saroyan
"We have reached a verdict your honor, this man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing!"
- From the HBO film Angels in America
"'The secret of this kind of climbing,' said Japhy, 'is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you never hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like Zen.' Which it was."
- From The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
"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 still differently, to awake from the half-slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake."
- Erich Fromm
"Birds chirp, dogs run, mountains are high, valleys low. It's all perfect wisdom! the seasons change, the stars shine in the heavens; it's perfect wisdom. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, we are always in the midst of the Way. Or, more strictly speaking, we are nothing but the Way itself."
-Taizan Maezumi
"The person who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that a person exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening."
- Karlfried Durckheim