The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly to you.
Thomas Dreier
Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.
Shirley Hufstedler
Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
John Milton
No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Horace Walpole
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher
Always remember that the only thought that you need to concern yourself with is the present one. The thoughts of yesterday or of last year do not matter now, because if you can get the present thought right it will make everything else right here and now.
Emmet Fox
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair
Life just is. You have to flow with it. Give yourself to the moment. Let it happen.
Jerry Brown
In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach
You can see that a magnificent leap of awareness is required for the fish to extend its vision beyond the water in which it is immersed to the source of the ripples. A similar leap of awareness will be required of you. When you understand the source clearly, you'll see that the ripples of your mind have nothing to do with you; you'll just watch them, without attachment, no longer compelled to overreact everytime a pebble drops.
Dan Millman
If you want congenial companionship, if you want to be loved, you must first think thoughts of love and good-will.
Emmet Fox
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven and hell a fable.
Charles Caleb Colton
I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.
Wayne Dyer
Love, compassion, and tolerance are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it if you have love, compassion, and tolerance.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, For the Love of God
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden
What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Everything in this world is transitory and fleeting…No man was ever born who could stop his body from changing constantly. Body is the name of a series of changes.
Paramanananda
He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has.
Epictetus
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach
We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.
Thornton Wilder
One has to keep the mind unruffled and not be affected by the fleeting phenomena around one. When the mind is unmoved, one will not be enslaved by worldly events.
Huineng
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim
The meaning of life is to live moment to moment. Just follow the flow of life from childhood to old age. Be born when it is time to be born and die when it is time to die.
Zhuang Zi
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful to be responsible to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter to count to stand for something to have made some difference that you lived at all.
Leo Rosten
I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate–it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.
Leo Buscaglia
The Universal is always the same,the specifics are always different.
Robert Aitken
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
Martha Graham
The undisturbed mind is like the calm body of water reflecting the brilliance of the moon.
Yagyu Jubei
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
Ram Dass
Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem.
Manuel Hernandez
Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.
Ram Dass
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.
Gail Sheehy
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
Joseph Campbell
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce
Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
What happens to you and what you do are one and the same process. There is no real separation between one thing called you and another quite different thing called the universe. When you stop talking and naming, they are quite obviously one.
Alan Watts
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
Ali Ibn-Abe-Talib (7th c.)
And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly to you.
Thomas Dreier
The art of happiness is to serve all, and all shall serve you.
Yogi Bhajan
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw
Every time and every place is uniquely different. There is no need to compare it with any other time and place. Just carefully taste the present–that is enough!
Zen saying
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
We are kept from the experience of spirit because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas…As we begin to clear away this clutter, the energy of divine light and love begins to flow through our beings.
Thomas Keating
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Philo
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
Helen Keller
The world is a spell, an enchantement, an amazement, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game.
Alan Watts
The secret of change consists in concentrating one's energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old.
Dan Millman
The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest meaning and significance.
Pablo Casals
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them.
Helen Keller
All joy in this world comes from wanting others to be happy, and all suffering in this world comes from wanting only oneself to be happy.
Shantideva
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.
Mahatma Gandhi
Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.
Mark Victor Hansen
Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.
Albert Einstein
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh
You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.
Barbara Sher
Never try to be better than someone else. Learn from others, and try to be the best you can be. Success is the by-product of that preparation.
John Wooden
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other sees stars.
Fredrick Langbridge
It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.
Ram Dass
Barn's burnt down–
Mizuta Masahide
now
I can see the moon.
(In 1688 Masahide's house was burnt down, prompting him to write his most famous haiku)
A happy life consists of tranquility of mind.
Cicero
Never confuse motion with action.
Benjamin Franklin
The undisturbed mind is like the calm body of water reflecting the brilliance of the moon.
Yagyu Jubei
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
Ram Dass
Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem.
Manuel Hernandez
Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.
Ram Dass
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.
Gail Sheehy
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
Joseph Campbell
If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Bruce Barton
Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
What happens to you and what you do are one and the same process. There is no real separation between one thing called you and another quite different thing called the universe. When you stop talking and naming, they are quite obviously one.
Alan Watts
The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly to you.
Thomas Dreier
Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.
don Miguel Ruiz
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
Muhammad Ali
The art of happiness is to serve all, and all shall serve you.
Yogi Bhajan
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
William Ralph Inge
This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts
Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
Ernest Holmes
Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.
Shirley Hufstedler
Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
John Milton
No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Horace Walpole
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher
A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.
Max Muller
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
Maya Angelou
The more complicated the world gets and the more intrusive it becomes on our personal psychological space and privacy, the more important it will be to practice non-doing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Ursula Le Guin
The important thing is somehow to begin.
Henry Moore
Never let the odds keep you from pursuing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.
Satchel Paige
The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.
Desiderius Erasmus
To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.
Bertolt Brecht
It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive.
Rnaud Desjardins
In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.
Abram L. Urban
The brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as aerobics sculpt the muscles, so mental training sculpts the gray matter in ways scientists are only beginning to fathom.
Richard Davidson
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
Dag Hammarskjöld
Follow what you are genuinely passionate about and let that guide you to your destination.
Diane Sawyer
Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
Carl Jung
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
Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.
Brian Tracy
You want to know how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair.
Elie Wiesel
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
Doubt is a great tool for reality testing; it is debilitating as a place of residence. So, think of doubt as a momentary friend.
Jeanie Marshall
While you are walking, smile and be in the here and now, and you will transform that place into paradise.
Thich Nhat Hanh
People occasionally come up to me and say: 'I want what you seem to have. Can you either give it to me or show me how to get it?' And I say to them: 'You have it already. You just can't feel it, because your mind is making too much noise. Quiet your mind, and it's yours.'
Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now
The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
Shirley MacLaine
Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Peter F. Drucker
Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.
Mark Twain
Do not rely on meditation to avoid problems. Without problems the seeking spirit could go mad. Therefore the sage says: reach liberation in the middle of turbulences.
Kyong Ho
Faith and doubt both are needed–not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.
Lillian Smith
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling "I am". The "I am" is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the "I am" will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson
Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.
Zoroaster
Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. The intellect can never lead one to a complete insight. One has to use one's entire being to come into contact with the truth.
Huineng
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.
Henry David Thoreau
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott
If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change.
John A. Simone, Sr.
Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
Mohandas Gandhi
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
Friedrich Nietzsche
How can I be still? By flowing with the stream.
Lao Tzu
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.
Winston Churchill
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
Variously attributed to Epictetus or Epicurus
All I can do is engage with complete sincerity. Then whatever happens, there is no regret.
The Dalai Lama
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
Max Erhmann in Desiderata
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
No one is a failure who is enjoying life.
William Feather
The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
Helen Keller
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.
Aldous Huxley
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Everything has a bright and dark side to it. Those who see only the dark side of things bring sorrow and pain upon themselves. To those who are able to see at the same time the bright side of it, every day is a good day.
Yunmen
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
Dag Hammarskjold
Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
Be wise in the use of time. The question in life is not how much time do we have. The question is: what shall we do with it?
Anna Robertson Brown
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and a willingness to remain vulnerable.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.
William Shakespeare
The most difficult thing of all—yet the most essential—is to love life, even when you suffer, because life is all.
Leo Tolstoy
You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about…
Richard Feynman
What we have to learn, in both meditation and in life, is to be free of attachment to the good experiences, and free of aversion to the negative ones.
Sogyal Rinpoche
When confusion reigns, it is easy to remember this truth: I am not my thoughts, nor my emotions, nor my sensory perceptions, nor my experiences. I am not the contents of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which everything happens. I am consciousness. I am the Present. I Am.
Eckhart Tolle
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
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Carl Jung
All joy in this world comes from wanting others to be happy, and all suffering in this world comes from wanting only oneself to be happy.
Shantideva
All sentient beings developed through natural selection in such a way that pleasant sensations serve as their guide, and especially the pleasure derived from sociability and from loving our families.
Charles Darwin
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One is never as fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Never confuse motion with action.
Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac
Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference–in our own lives and those of others.
Sharon Salzberg
If it is not right, do not do it.
Marcus Aurelius
Doing is the great thing. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time they will come to like doing it.
John Ruskin
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Ralph W. Emerson
One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.
Anthony Robbins
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Shunryu Suzuki
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.
Dalai Lama
This is the only meditation I know.
Bokuju
While I eat, I eat.
While I walk, I walk.
And while I feel sleepy, I sleep.
Whatsoever happens, happens.
I never interfere.
Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life.
Andrew Bonar Law
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Baruch Spinoza
We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
Tom Robbins
Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.
Eknath Easwaran
We are fallible. We certainly haven't attained perfection. But we can strive for it, and the virtue is in the striving.
Carlos P. Romulo
©2023 Tom Barrett