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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

6/1/18 to 11/30/18



Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Mahatma Gandhi

It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised; the mosquito is swatted.

Catherine O'Hara

Hah! The Dark Side -- Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Yoda in Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace

The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset.

Geoffrey Madan

When we leave this world, how much we have loved will be our true legacy. It is the only thing we will leave behind and carry with us.

Anne Siloy

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

Chinese proverb

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

Igor Stravinsky

Individually, people are finding that a simpler lifestyle provides greater satisfaction than relentless pursuit of materialism.

Laurance Rockefeller

I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness - it's right in front of me if I'm paying attention and practicing gratitude.

Brene' Brown

Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.

Vincent van Gogh

One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficutly to make--to part with one's faith, one's love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.

Anais Nin

By developing a sense of respect for others and a concern for their welfare, we reduce our own selfishness, which is the source of all problems, and enhance our sense of kindness which is a natural source of goodness.

The Dalai Lama

It's amazing how much you can hear when no one is saying anything.

Elaine St. James in Inner Simplicity

Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.

Saadi of Shiraz

The greatest obstacle to progress is not the absence of knowledge, but the illusion of knowledge.

Daniel Boorstin

When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

Henry Miller

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.

Frank Crane

You can't separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcom X

Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.

Ram Dass

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.

Aristide Briand

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

John Hanley

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Aldous Huxley

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.

John Milton

If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.

John Atkinson

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

Sally Kempton

If rejection destroys your self-esteem, you're letting others hold you as an emotional hostage.

Brian Tracy

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.

Hasidic Saying

When you are no longer compelled by desire or fear . . . when you have seen the radiance of eternity in all forms of time . . . when you follow your bliss . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors . . . and the world will step in and help.

Joseph Campbell

The difference between being knowledgeable and being enlightened is that one who is knowledgeable leads the way with a torch, while an enlightened one is a torch.

Anthony de Mello

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it's true.

Robert Oppenheimer

In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Carl Buechner

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

George Bancroft

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

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.

Richard Bach

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

Reflect that life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use alone.

Samuel Johnson

The more virtuous any man is, the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious.

Cicero

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for... reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.

Casey Stengel

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above:
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Walter Scott

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

We do not receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

David Hume

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

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

Joyce Brothers

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

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

As for me, I know of nothing else but miracles.

Walt Whitman

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Mahatma Gandhi

It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised; the mosquito is swatted.

Catherine O'Hara

Hah! The Dark Side -- Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Yoda in Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace

The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset.

Geoffrey Madan

When we leave this world, how much we have loved will be our true legacy. It is the only thing we will leave behind and carry with us.

Anne Siloy

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

Chinese proverb

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

Igor Stravinsky

The origin of human violence is that we hold other people's pasts against them.

Michael Conklin

Think of all sentient beings as buddha, but keep your hand on your wallet.

Tibetan Saying

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

By developing a sense of respect for others and a concern for their welfare, we reduce our own selfishness, which is the source of all problems, and enhance our sense of kindness which is a natural source of goodness.

The Dalai Lama

It's amazing how much you can hear when no one is saying anything.

Elaine St. James in Inner Simplicity

Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.

Saadi of Shiraz

The greatest obstacle to progress is not the absence of knowledge, but the illusion of knowledge.

Daniel Boorstin

When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

People cannot live gracefully or peacefully, joyfully or justly, without celebration in their lives, . . . without awe.

Matthew Fox

The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

Henry Miller

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.

Ernest Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.

Frank Crane

You can't separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcom X

Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.

Ram Dass

Knowledge is like light, use it and it grows brighter, ignore it and it fades away.

Alexander Everett

Your life works to the degree you keep your agreements.

Werner Erhard

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

John Hanley

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.

Aristide Briand

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Aldous Huxley

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.

John Milton

If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.

John Atkinson

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

Sally Kempton

If rejection destroys your self-esteem, you're letting others hold you as an emotional hostage.

Brian Tracy

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.

Hasidic Saying

When you are no longer compelled by desire or fear . . . when you have seen the radiance of eternity in all forms of time . . . when you followyour bliss . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors . . . and the world will step in and help.

Joseph Campbell

The difference between being knowledgeable and being enlightened is that one who is knowledgeable leads the way with a torch, while an enlightened one is a torch.

Anthony de Mello

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it's true.

Robert Oppenheimer

In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Carl Buechner

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang

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

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

Reflect that life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use alone.

Samuel Johnson

The more virtuous any man is, the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious.

Cicero

God sells us all things at the price of labor.

Leonardo da Vinci

It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

William James

We do not receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

David Hume

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

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

Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.

Paul Tillich

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

Joyce Brothers

Friendship is a mysterious power: you show your friend your weakness, and somehow you are both the stronger.

Martin Amis

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke

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

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

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

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

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

Dalai Lama

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

As for me, I know of nothing else but miracles.

Walt Whitman

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Mahatma Gandhi

It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised; the mosquito is swatted.

Catherine O'Hara

Hah! The Dark Side -- Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Yoda in Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace

The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset.

Geoffrey Madan

When we leave this world, how much we have loved will be our true legacy. It is the only thing we will leave behind and carry with us.

Anne Siloy

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

Chinese proverb

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

Thomas Paine

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

Igor Stravinsky

Think of all sentient beings as buddha, but keep your hand on your wallet.

Tibetan Saying

Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.

Vincent van Gogh

By developing a sense of respect for others and a concern for their welfare, we reduce our own selfishness, which is the source of all problems, and enhance our sense of kindness which is a natural source of goodness.

The Dalai Lama

It's amazing how much you can hear when no one is saying anything.

Elaine St. James in Inner Simplicity

Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.

Saadi of Shiraz

The greatest obstacle to progress is not the absence of knowledge, but the illusion of knowledge.

Daniel Boorstin

When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

Henry Miller

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.

Frank Crane

You can't separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Malcom X

Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.

Ram Dass

Knowledge is like light, use it and it grows brighter, ignore it and it fades away.

Alexander Everett

Your life works to the degree you keep your agreements.

Werner Erhard

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

John Hanley

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Aldous Huxley

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.

John Milton

If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.

John Atkinson

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

Sally Kempton

If rejection destroys your self-esteem, you're letting others hold you as an emotional hostage.

Brian Tracy

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.

Hasidic Saying

When you are no longer compelled by desire or fear . . . when you have seen the radiance of eternity in all forms of time . . . when you follow your bliss . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors . . . and the world will step in and help. 

Joseph Campbell

The difference between being knowledgeable and being enlightened is that one who is knowledgeable leads the way with a torch, while an enlightened one is a torch.

Anthony de Mello

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it's true.

Robert Oppenheimer

In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Carl Buechner

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

George Bancroft

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 a habit is usually in proportion to its absurdity.

Marcel Proust

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.

Richard Bach




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