Know that every right thing you do - every good word you say - every positive thought you think - has good effect.
Peace Pilgrim
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end, you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
J. Krishnamurti
Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way.
Dogen
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
Pearl S. Buck
The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.
Tryon Edwards
The mind denies that which it cannot understand. In valuing the mind as much as we do, we have a tendency to deny mystery, to deny the spiritual.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.
Norman Vincent Peale
Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
Bob Marley
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
Pericles
The teacher, if indeed wise, does not bid you to enter the house of their wisdom, but leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
Kahil Gibran
When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists -- as it surely will. Then act with courage.
Ponca Chief White Eagle
Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.
Sophia Loren
Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of a Liberated One.
Huang Po
We come into this world crying while all around us are smiling. May we so live that we go out of this world smiling while everybody around us is weeping.
Persian proverb
Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool.
Charles Simmons
So great has been the endurance, so incredible the achievement, that, as long as the sun keeps a set course in heaven, it would be foolish to despair of the human race.
Ernest L. Woodward
If you want to build a ship, don't herd 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
Paradise is always where love dwells.
Jean Paul F. Richter
Integrity has no need of rules.
Albert Camus
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away.
Sir Arthur Helps
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Robert F. Kennedy
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself.
Sherlock Holmes
The meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out into the world and doing something original.
Tom Morris
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Persons and societies do not submit passively to surroundings and events. They make choices as to the places where they live and the activities in which they engage--choices based on what they want to be, to do and to become. Furthermore, persons and societies often change their goals and ways; they can even retrace their steps and start in a new direction if they believe they are on a wrong course. Thus, whereas animal life is prisoner of biological evolution which is essential irreversible, human life has the wonderful freedom of social evolution which is rapidly reversible and creative. Wherever human beings are concerned, trend is not destiny.
Rene Dubos
Thought is a language that has no sound, while words are the symbols of a language. When language and thinking are excessive, they become a hindrance to wisdom.
Zen
As rain does not break into a well-thatched house, so craving does not break into a well-trained mind.
The Dhammapada
We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
Alan Watts
The world is good-natured to people who are good natured.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Common sense dictates that we evaluate our beliefs on the basis of how they affect us. If they make us more loving, creative, and wise, they are good beliefs. If they make us cruel, jealous, depressed and sick, they cannot be good beliefs.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.
Turkish Proverb
The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer
It is virtuous activities that determine our happiness, and the opposite kind that produces the opposite effect.
Aristotle, Ethics
When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
Hugh White
The sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own. He is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for Virtue is kind. He is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for Virtue is faithful.
LaoTzu
On the level of undefined energy we are one. Energy is energy. You are an individual experience of energy, but we are one. We feel our individualness and yet we are also collective. There is no separateness, just an experience of separateness. We are a collective having individual experiences.
Janet Barrett
Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
Henry James
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
Buckminster Fuller
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Plato
Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
Ruth Gordon
Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth.
Menachem Begin
One can overcome the forces of negative emotions, like anger and hatred, by cultivating their counter-forces, like love and compassion.
The Dalai Lama
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
Helen Keller
The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.
Carl Jung
What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.
Karl Jaspers
The more we know, the better we forgive. Those who feel deeply feel for all living beings.
Madame De Stael
Do good to thy Friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.
Benjamin Franklin
The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The people never give up their liberties...but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke
Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it.
A Course in Miracles
Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.
Eckhart Tolle
There is no perfect solution for all things in this world. When city folks go to the countryside to hike, they wish for a bright sunshiny day... while the local farmers wish for rain for their crops.
Tsai Chih
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid but by an infine expecation of the dawn.
Henry David Thoureau
Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
Eckhart Tolle
Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.
Tyron Edwards
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, a loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it's impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.
Barbara Kingsolver
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Alfred Korzybski
We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.
George William Russell
Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory.
F.W. Faber
Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.
Ralph Marston
We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone--but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.
Walter Anderson
One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
Morihei Ueshiba
Virtues are virtues because they give joy once they are practiced. If a virtue does not give joy, it is not a virtue.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Treat people as if they are what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
Goethe
Things are beautiful if you love them.
Jean Anouilh, Mademoiselle Colombe
To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.
Pauline R. Kezer
Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
Goethe
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
Ben Hecht
Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand -- and melting like a snowflake.
Marie Beyon Ray
Your task is not to seek love, but to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
A Course In Miracles
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain
First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes.
Robert A. Heinlein
Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean, we can't separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
Marianne Williamson
Peace originates with the flow of things - its heart is like the movement of the wind and waves. The Way is like the veins that circulate blood through our bodies, following the natural flow of the life force.
Morihei Ueshiba
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.
H. Jackson Brown
The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.
Henry L. Stimson
Your duty is to be; and not to be this or that.
Sri Ramana Maharishi
I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.
Mahatma Gandhi
The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life.
John Macy
The quieter you become the more you can hear.
Ram Dass
We must find our own particular way of loving the world and put our energy into it. Decide your way of loving and you will be rewarded.
Bernie Siegel
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the Heart.
Helen Keller
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
Vincent Van Gogh
First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes.
Robert A. Heinlein
Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question...Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
Carlos Castaneda
The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.
Victor Frankl
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
Henry Drummond
You can't see the light in others until you see it in yourself. Once you see it in yourself, there is no one in whom you do not see the light. It does not matter if they see it or not. You know it's there. And it is the light you address when you speak to them.
Paul Ferrini
The past is to learn from and not to live in.
Richard L. Evans
Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.
Hubert Humphrey
Cherish your vision and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
Napoleon Hill
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of.
Ben Franklin
I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward somone who needs help. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heals our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives. It is our connection to God and to each other.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
Norman Vincent Peale
On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Elizabeth Taylor
Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.
Francois de Sales
Everybody is unique. Compare not yourself with anybody else lest you spoil God's curriculum.
Baal Shem Tov
The tenacity of habit is usually in proportion to its absurdity.
Marcel Proust
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville
The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
William Grimshaw
Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving
Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
The more virtuous any man is, the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious.
Cicero
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
Walter Scott
And men below, and saints above:
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
Enlightenment is a rare combination of innocence and intelligence, having words for expression and, at the same time, being very silent. In that state, the mind is fully in the present moment. Whatever is necessary is revealed to you in such a natural and spontaneous way, you just sit and the song of the nature flows through you.
Sri Sri Ravishankar
Everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Human beings only learn and evolve through relationship. The only way we can see ourselves objectively is through the reflection of others. We can go off and sit in a cave and meditate for years, but we only really find out what happened in that cave when we come out and get involved with other people. So we need each other if we want to evolve.
Andrew Cohen
We all came into this world gifted with innocence, but gradually, as we became more intelligent, we lost our innocence. We were born with silence and as we grew up, we lost the silence and were filled with words. We lived in our hearts and as time passed, we moved into our heads.
Now the reversal of this journey is enlightenment. It is the journey from the head back to the heart, from words back to silence; getting back to our innocence in spite of our intelligence. Although very simple, this is a great achievement. Eckhart Tolle
Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller
Friendship is a mysterious power: you show your friend your weakness, and somehow you are both the stronger.
Martin Amis
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls... A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.
Mother Teresa
Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
Hermann Hesse
Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
Hyman Judah Schachtel
Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kierkegaard
When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound. Rebuild those plans and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
Napoleon Hill
How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
George Washington Carver
The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
From contentment with little comes happiness.
African Proverb
All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
Edwin Markham
The surest sign of spiritual progress is a total lack of concern about progress. There is an utter absence of anxiety about anything like liberation and a sort of hollowness in one's being, a kind of looseness and involuntary surrender to whatever might happen.
Ramesh Balsekar
The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.
William Jennings Bryan
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharial Nehru
[INTERLUDE HOME][THOUGHT ARCHIVE][MEDITATE][MEDITATION ARCHIVE]
[PRAYERS][POETRY][LINKS][BOOKSHOP][COMMENTS]©2018 Tom Barrett