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Past Thoughts of the Day from Interlude: An Internet Retreat

12/1/19 to 5/31/20



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

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Tacitus

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

Jawaharlal Nehru

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

e.e. cummings

Life is a long lesson in humility.

James M. Barrie

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing.

Zimbabwe proverb

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.

Woodrow Wilson

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.

Wayne Dyer

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Eden Phillpotts

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.

Betty Smith

I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

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

Chinese Proverb

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

Vaclav Havel

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.

Mahatma Gandhi

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Jean De La Fontaine

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

Augustine of Hippo

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breath, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

Don't judge each day by the harvest that you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

Robert Louis Stevenson

True happiness is…to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Choose the best life; for habit will make it pleasant.

Epictetus

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Voltaire

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

Frank A. Clark

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Edwin H. Chapin

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be willing to have it so; acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

William James

Enjoy each moment. Appreciate what is. Be completely here and now. That is where eternity is found.

Peter McWilliams

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.

Benjamin Disraeli

High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring.

Edward Abbey

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.

Peace Pilgrim

Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.

Eknath Easwaran

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.

Eleonora Duse

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

George Bernard Shaw

We don't stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing.

George Bernard Shaw

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

Yasutani Roshi

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Alan Cohen

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.

Alan Watts

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Thomas Carlyle

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Mark Twain

We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

Indira Gandhi

All the masters tell us that the reality of life—which our noisy waking consciousness prevents us from hearing—speaks to us chiefly in silence.

Karlfried Graf Durckheim

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Albert Einstein

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

I relax my body completely, relax my mind completely, and then imagine myself at a level where anything can happen.

Richard Bach

When I talk about having good hearing, I don't mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don't mean just looking, but looking at yourself.

Chuang Tzu

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

Chinese Proverb

Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.

Chogyam Trungpa

If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway—a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren't yet operational. There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.

Mary Karr

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

Chuang Tzu

As a rock remains unmoved by a storm, so the wise man remains unmoved by praise or blame.

The Dhammapada

We are all cells in the same body of humanity.

Peace Pilgrim

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

Winston Churchill

It reduces itself to this. You have to be in the right place at the right time, but when it comes, you better have something on the ball.

Groucho Marx

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rabbinical Saying

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Samuel Butler

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Albert Schweitzer

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.

Marty Feldman

If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.

Roy T. Bennett

What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do alone tomorrow.

Lev Vygotsky

Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.

Rumi

Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.

Dorothy Day

The realization of Truth is brought about by perception, and not in the least by ten millions of facts.

Sankara

Impermanence and selflessness are not negative aspect of life, but the very foundation on which life is built. Impermanence is the constant transformation of things. Without impermanence, there can be no life. Selflessness is the interdependent nature of all things. Without interdependence, nothing could exist.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The quality of your life is directly related to how much uncertainty you can comfortably handle.

Tony Robbins

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

Malcolm Gladwell

There can only be one state of mind as you approach any profound test; total concentration, a spirit of togetherness, and strength.

Pat Riley

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

Albert Einstein

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.

Zeno The Stoic

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

Robert Frost

People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.

Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is disease.

Lao Tzu

We are what our thoughts have made us: so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Swami Vivekananda

As irrigators lead water where they want,
as archers make their arrows straight,
as carpenters carve wood,
the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods.

Wendell Berry

As irrigators lead water where they want,
as archers make their arrows straight,
as carpenters carve wood,
the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

Happiness is not a reward—it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment—it is a result.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

William James

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.

Alan Keightly

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

Marion Wright Edelman

Think with your whole body.

Taisen Deshimaru

We find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

Maxwell Maltz

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

Marcus Aurelius

The key to wisdom is this—constant and frequent questioning…for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Peter Abelard

You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

J. Krishnamurti

That which one wants to hide most are one's own faults, but on the contrary, they should not be hidden but rather acknowledged, if one has any real desire to be free from them. By acknowledging one's faults, one destroys them or finds a way to improve on them.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

John Lubbock

Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

William Shakespeare

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

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

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Tacitus

Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.

Henry Van Dyke

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

Jawaharlal Nehru

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely-- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears-- when you give your whole attention to it.

Krishnamurti

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

Chinese Proverb

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

Vaclav Havel

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.

Mahatma Gandhi

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Jean De La Fontaine

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

Augustine of Hippo

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive---to breath, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

Don't judge each day by the harvest that you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

Robert Louis Stevenson

True happiness is...to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and Iknow no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Voltaire

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

Frank A. Clark

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Edwin H. Chapin

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be willing to have it so; acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

William James

Enjoy each moment. Appreciate what is. Be completely here and now. That is where eternity is found.

Peter Mc Williams

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Albert Camus

The enlightened give thanks for what most people take for granted… As you begin to be grateful for what most people take for granted, that vibration of gratitude makes you more receptive to good in your life.

Michael Beckwith

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Heraclitus

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

James Thurber

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

Richard Bach

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Socrates

The meaning of life is nothing very special. Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

from Monty Python "The Meaning of Life"

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.

Martin Buber

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

Albert Ellis

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

Mohandas Gandhi

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Anatole France

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.

John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

Elbert Hubbard

The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.

Persian Proverb

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Samuel Johnson

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Leo Buscaglia

Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.

Muhammad

Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life's blessings.

Oprah Winfrey

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

Kahlil Gibran

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

Alexander Hamilton

Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth. And set down as gain each day that Fortune grants.

Horace

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Helen Keller

Do not consider painful what is good for you.

Euripides

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,
The foresight to know where you are going,
And the insight to know when you have gone too far.

An Irish Blessing

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Swami Vivekananda

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.

Neil Armstrong

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

Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Pete Seeger

The key to wisdom is this -- constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Peter Abelard

You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

J. Krishnamurti

That which one wants to hide most are one's own faults, but on the contrary, they should not be hidden but rather acknowledged, if one has any real desire to be free from them. By acknowledging one's faults, one destroys them or finds a way to improve on them.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

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

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.

Rainer Maria Rilke

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

John Lubbock

Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

William Shakespeare

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

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

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Tacitus

For it is in giving that we receive.

Francis of Assisi

Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.

Henry Van Dyke

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

Jawaharlal Nehru

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely-- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears-- when you give your whole attention to it.

Krishnamurti

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Rabindranath Tagore

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

Mary Wollstonecraft

I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

Edith Cavell

Life is a long lesson in humility.

James M. Barrie

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing.

Zimbabwe proverb

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.

Wayne Dyer

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Eden Phillpotts

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.

Betty Smith

I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

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

Chinese Proverb

Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

Vaclav Havel

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.

Alan Watts

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.

Mahatma Gandhi

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Jean De La Fontaine

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

Augustine of Hippo

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

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive---to breath, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

Frank A. Clark



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