The Zen master Ling Chi said that the miracle is not to walk on burning charcoal or in the thin air or on the water; the miracle is just to walk on earth. You breathe in. You become aware of the fact that you are alive. You are still alive and you are walking on this beautiful planet…The greatest of all miracles is to be alive.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Men are not punished for their sins but by them.
Elbert Hubbard
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
Frank Herbert
We have free will, but our free will lies in our choice of thought.
Emmet Fox
...love the universe as one's city, one's native country, the beloved fatherland of every soul.
Simone Weil
Dwell not on the past. Use it to illustrate a point, then leave it behind. Nothing really matters except what you do now in this instant of time. From this moment onwards you can be an entirely different person, filled with love and understanding, ready with an outstretched hand, uplifted and positive in every thought and deed.
Eileen Caddy
When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual, there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving, that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts. You are that depth.
Eckhart Tolle
When man awakens, he finds that he is part of the one great Reality and he realizes his union with all things.
Paramananda
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Isaac Newton
It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.
Tom Bodett
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.
Crazy Horse, Sioux Chief
Most people we perceive as 'antagonists' are merely struggling individuals trapped in their bounded worldview, desperately trying to pursue their own happiness.
Robert Thurman
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
Marie Curie
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Albert Camus
Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
James Baldwin
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
Barbara Kingsolver
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana
The blossom vanishes of itself as the fruit grows, so will your lower self vanish as the divine grows in you.
Ramakrisna Parmahansa
Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.
Marshall McLuhan
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
Richard P. Feynman
One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
Lewis Mumford
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin... But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Alfred Souza
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
Samuel Johnson
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James Baldwin
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Soren Kierkegaard
Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow--it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stomp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it.
Shakti Gawain
All beings are owners of their Karma. Whatever volitional actions they do, good or evil, of those they shall become their heir.
Gautama Buddha
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.
Deepak Chopra
True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
William Penn
Fight for things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The door to the human heart can be opened only from the inside.
Spanish proverb
All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature.
Zeno of Citium (300-260 BC)
O Mother Earth, You are the earthly source of all existence. The fruits which you bear are the source of life for the Earth peoples. You are always watching over Your fruits as does a mother. May the steps which we take in life upon You be sacred and not weak.
Oglala Sioux prayer
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Winston Churchill
The wise man does not lay up his treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
Lao-tzu
We must all live so that our children do not have to pay for our deeds.
Andrejs Upits
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Barn's burnt down—now I can see the moon.
Mizuta Masahide
There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
Carl Jung
Live more and more in the Present, which is ever beautiful and stretches away before and beyond the limits of the past and the future.
Meher Baba
No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
This very moment is the perfect teacher, and it's always with us.
Pema Chodron
When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
Helen Keller
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not the mountain that we conquer but ourselves.
Sir Edmund Hillary
First there must be order and harmony within your own mind. Then this order will spread to your family, then to the community, and finally to your entire kingdom.
Confucius
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all!
Rumi
The mind should be a vastness like the sky. Mental events should be allowed to disperse like clouds.
Longchenpa
My fine strong horse can pull a heavy plough and never tire. Yet it can also gallop through a wild country. I am working hard at love, with the wind in my hair.
José Morazán
There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body and mind. Discover that current and stay with it.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
The sun and the moon are not mirrored in cloudy water. Thus the almighty cannot be mirrored in a heart that is obsessed by the idea of me and mine.
Ramakrishna
Thinking, or more precisely identification with thinking, gives rise to and maintains the ego, which, in our Western society in particular, is out of control. It believes it is real and tries hard to maintain its supremacy. Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.
Eckhart Tolle
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The act of forgiveness takes place in our own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person.
Louise Hay
Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.
Eliza Tabor
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
Kahlil Gibran
Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.
Madeline L’Engle
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
R. Buckminster Fuller
The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be.
Lao Tzu
The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be.
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.
Nelson Mandela
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world.
The Buddha
Of the desires expressed the one which is most right is the desire to be 'master of oneself,' because without this nothing else is possible.
G. I. Gurdjieff
The key to happiness is in allowing whatever arises to be as spontaneous and joyful as possible, recognizing that whatever occurs is impermanent and nothing, no matter how painful or pleasurable, is going to last.
Fred Alan Wolf
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
Dag Hammarskjold
Soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than violence.
Herman Hesse
It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
Most people we perceive as 'antagonists' are merely struggling individuals trapped in their bounded worldview, desperately trying to pursue their own happiness.
Robert Thurman
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
Marie Curie
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Albert Camus
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
Barbara Kingsolver
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
Viktor E. Frankl
Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.
Mark Twain
Hope is the physician of each misery.
Irish Proverb
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.
Rudyard Kipling
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.
Yogi Berra
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
Plato
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. The way in which power works is a mystery.
Albert Schweitzer
To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter…to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring—these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You must have faith that the Universe will unfold as it should.
Spock
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus
You just do whatever you do to serve in a way that increases the connection of humanity, the awareness of the interrelatedness of all things. You are more effective and efficient in any action when you are capable of being totally involved in what you're doing, and totally non-attached.
Ram Dass
Mercy has no enemies. In the face of compassion, all perverse and evil forces melt into nothingness.
Venerable Master Hsing Yun
To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Zen master Ling Chi said that the miracle is not to walk on burning charcoal or in the thin air or on the water; the miracle is just to walk on earth. You breathe in. You become aware of the fact that you are alive. You are still alive and you are walking on this beautiful planet…The greatest of all miracles is to be alive.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Men are not punished for their sins but by them.
Elbert Hubbard
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
Frank Herbert
Fear not to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
We have free will, but our free will lies in our choice of thought.
Emmet Fox
...love the universe as one's city, one's native country, the beloved fatherland of every soul.
Simone Weil
Dwell not on the past. Use it to illustrate a point, then leave it behind. Nothing really matters except what you do now in this instant of time. From this moment onwards you can be an entirely different person, filled with love and understanding, ready with an outstretched hand, uplifted and positive in every thought and deed.
Eileen Caddy
...almost all success and happiness in this world is born from ordinary things. We allow ourselves to be seduced by the spectacular, but the basics are where you find the true and lasting treasure.
Matthew Kelly, I Heard God Laugh
When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual, there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving, that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts. You are that depth.
Eckhart Tolle
When man awakens, he finds that he is part of the one great Reality and he realizes his union with all things.
Paramananda
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Isaac Newton
The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.
Tom Bodett
A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the constant pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.
Albert Einstein
Don′t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
Most people we perceive as 'antagonists' are merely struggling individuals trapped in their bounded worldview, desperately trying to pursue their own happiness.
Robert Thurman
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
Marie Curie
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Albert Camus
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
Barbara Kingsolver
Don't wait for the last judgment—it takes place every day.
Albert Camus
The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana
Love without conversation is impossible.
Mortimer Adler
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.
John Cage
Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.
Marshall McLuhan
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
William Somerset Maugham
A single idea whose time has come can change the world.
Steven Beresford
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin... But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Alfred Souza
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
John Lubbock
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
Samuel Johnson
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James Baldwin
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Soren Kierkegaard
Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow. It has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it.
Shakti Gawain
What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past.
Sai Baba
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Gilda Radner
An optimist is someone who gets treed by a lion but enjoys the scenery. A pessimist is one who builds dungeons in the air.
Walter Winchell
Sadness is a natural human feeling. I would be worried if someone never felt sad. We are not looking for constant happiness. Rather we are looking for the sense that life is flowing along the way it should be.
Leslie Gray
To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
Anatole France
Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.
W. Clement Stone
Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.
Jose Marti
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.
Elvis Presley
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
Blaise Pascal
If we could look into each other's hearts and understand the unique challenges that each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance and care.
Marvin Ashton
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
Krishnamurti
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“You don′t need to control emotion,” he said. “Emotions are natural, like passing weather. Sometimes it′s fear, sometimes sorrow or anger. Emotions are not the problem. The key is to transform the energy of emotion into constructive action.”
Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
©2020 Tom Barrett