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Wisdom Quotes


No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Voltaire

You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere.

Sri Nisargadatta

There will come a day when you will feel totally helpless, a mere pawn of destiny, and then you will begin to realize that God alone is your haven of security.

Paramhansa Yogananda

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Buddha

Seeking enlightenment? Look down at your feet, you
are on the path. Look up to the sky, it shines
down upon you. Look into your heart, find it
there.

Unknown

The Higher Power knows what to do and how to do it. Trust it.

Ramana Maharshi

There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
          

Teresa of Ávila

They enter the region of the dark who are occupied solely with the finite. But they fall into a region of still greater darkness who are occupied solely with the Infinite.

Iso Upanishad

We have misunderstood our confusion when we think there is an answer to it. The confusion is not a result of questions that are too hard, but rather a questioner who is disintegrating. Confusion is the introduction to true intelligence.

Steven Harrison

I was searching for the truth, and the truth came knocking on the door, and I shouted "go away, I'm searching for the truth!"

Robert Pirsig

You are ungrateful to your teacher if you are not able to go beyond him.

Nietzsche

To prevent inquiry is among the worst of evils.

Thomas Holcroft

The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.

Arnold Glasgow

But first the disciple must pass through the complexity in order to exhaust the various possibilities until the awakening of the consciousness which leads toward simplicity: would he be able to bear the intermediate phase between his dream and reality.

de Lubicz

The life of faith is nothing but the continual pursuit of God through everything that disguises, disfigures, destroys, and, so to say, annihilates him.

Jean-Pierre deCaussade

In order to come to that which you know not, you must go by a way in which you know not. 

St. John of the Cross

What are my sins compared with Thy mercy? They are but as a cobweb before the wind.

Dmitri of Rostov

If a man has conscientiously followed this fourfold path, if he has practised mystical meditation and metaphysical reflection, purification of character and unselfish service, and yet seems to be remote from the goal, what is he to do? He has then to follow the admonition of Jesus: "Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you." He has literally to ask for Grace out of the deep anguish of his heart. We are all poor. He is indeed discerning who realizes this and becomes a beggar, imploring of God for Grace.

Paul Brunton

People who believe things can't be done will go out and prove they are "right".

unknown

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

Mark Twain

Success isn't built on success; it's built on failure, frustration and sometimes catastrophe.

Sumner Redstone

Worry comes from the belief that you are powerless.

Unknown

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!”

W.H. Murray


I am only one, but I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.

Edward Everett Hale

People who get shocked easily should be shocked a little more often.

Mae West

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.

Dalai Lama, (Seattle Times, May 15, 2001)

Great love and great achievement involves great risk.

The Dalai Lama

No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.

Leon Battista Alberti

I will Obtain The Ultimate Truth and Ultimate Reality, and the ultimate aim of my life in this world - whether my body may remain with me or it goes into pieces. My bones and flesh may go into complete annihilation or may remain with me. I Shall Obtain The True Form of the Universe.Through innumerable incarnation's good results, I have obtained a human body. I will not lose this golden opportunity and will certainly obtain samadhi and the real Form of Consciousness. Calamity may come or go, mountains may break on my head but I will not leave my promise to obtain Nirvana.

Buddha

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Howard Thurman

Do what you love... Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still.

Henry David Thoreau

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.

Werner Von Braun

Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo.
So little time, so much to know.

Mr. Nowhere Man, from Yellow Submarine

I think, therefore I am - at least, I think I am.

The Moody Blues

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Only those who take leisurely what the people of
the world are busy about can be busy about what
the people of the world take leisurely.

Chang Chao

To follow the buddha completely means you do not have your old views. To hit the mark completely means you have no new nest in which to settle.

Zen Master Dogen

Such is the strange paradox of the quest that on the one hand he must foster determined self-reliance but on the other yield to a feeling of utter reliance on the higher powers.

Paul Brunton

Awakening begins when a person realizes that they are going nowhere and they do not know where to go.

G.I. Gurdjieff

Most men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and continue as if nothing happened.

Winston Churchill

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.

Paul Fix

Read not to contradict and confute…nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

Sir Francis Bacon

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is a proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. The principle is condemnation before investigation.

Herbert Spencer

No man can begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.

Epictetus

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

Otto Von Bismark

When everyone thinks alike, there isn't much thinking taking place.

unknown

Men quarrel because they do not know how to argue.

G.K. Chesterton

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

You tell me what a man gits for his corn-pone, en I’ll tell what his ‘pinions is.

Mark Twain

I would rather have a beer with someone who is looking for the truth than with someone who has found it.

Vaclav Havel

If a person keeps a vow it’s usually not because of the vow.

James Cook

It’s easy to believe in something you can make money with.

James Cook

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

H.L. Mencken

If you've always done it that way, it's probably wrong.

Charles Kettering

"Thinking hard" hurts. It turns the sharp point of truth back upon the thinker. It pricks the bubble of ego complacency blown up by thinking easy. Its sharp wound forbids the forgetfulness which is the goal of evasive thinking. If one can forget the inner experience and its challenge can be evaded, the ego can remain comfortably unborn in the womb of the already known.

Francis G. Wickes

Clear thinking is 95% of spirituality.

Sardar Jagat Singh

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth....for my part,
I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it.

Patrick Henry

And as a matter of fact, Plotinus even delivers a warning, and he says in one of the passages that we must TEACH OUR SOULS. So right there he's warning us that we must have the correct doctrine, or we will misunderstand the experiences that we have.

Anthony Damiani

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand-fold.

Aristotle

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Albert Einstein

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Marcus Aurelius

You cannot keep getting better and better for ever, someday you'll have to get well.

Bob Ferguson

One does not begin to know and to feel one’s spiritual miseries until they begin to be cured.

Fénélon

When you're in a hurry, take the long way around.

Japanese proverb

Time - an illusion; a quality of the egoic earth plane: dividing Eternity into byte-sized chunks called moments, then pretending that we don't have enough of them to do what is unimportant, anyway.

GodDirect.org

We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.

Phillips Brookes

Do the thing and you shall have the power.

Emerson

I discovered that the Creator never singles out an individual for an important service to mankind without first testing him, through struggle, in proportion to the nature of the service he is to render.

Napoleon Hill

A bad habit first enters as a guest, then becomes a family member, then takes over completely.

The Talmud

When Fortune's cup into your hand doth pass, think of the headache as you raise the glass.

Awhadi - Persian mystic

If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

He who has earned the Grace of the Guru will undoubtedly be saved and never forsaken, just as the prey that has fallen into the tiger’s jaws will never be allowed to escape.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Every man has plenty of cause for sorrow but he alone understands the deep universal reason for sorrow who experiences that he is.

The Cloud of Unknowing

All things come to him who waits -- provided he knows what he is waiting for.

Woodrow T. Wilson

Do not imagine God acts as a carpenter who works or not, just as he pleases. When he finds you ready he must act, and pour into you, just as when the air is clean and pure the sun must pour into it and may not hold back.

Meister Eckhart

That which hurts, but is profitable, is drunk by the wise like medicine.
For the result, afterwards attained, becomes incomparable.

Nagarjuna

When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.

Sufi aphorism

This state is full of consolation for those who have attained it; but to do so it is necessary to pass through much anguish. The doctrine concerning pure love can only be taught by the action of God, and not by any effort of the mind. God teaches the soul not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions.

Jean-Pierre deCaussade

The horse that will bear us quickest to perfection is suffering.

Meister Eckhart

Because I love you I have given you bad health since the beginning of your life, so that you would feel how dependent you are on Me.

Sister Marie of the Order of Poor Clares of Jerusalem

The basic reason that real growth does not occur is that no one wants to feel pain. We are animals in that respect, conditioned to seek out things that bring us pleasure, and to avoid those which hurt. Pain must occur in the growth process. When we avoid pain, we avoid growth. That is what stops ninety percent of the people dead in their tracks.

Swami Rudrananda ("Rudi")

If suffering did not exist, it would be necessary to create it, because without it one cannot come to correct self-remembering

P. D. Ouspensky

The sugar cane yields its sweet juice only after it has been crushed relentlessly in a mill. The human entity yields its noblest traits and truest wisdom only after it has been crushed repeatedly in the mill of anguish.

Paul Brunton

When your grief transcends all bounds, it becomes its own cure.

Ghalib

You do not let go of anything. That is another trick of the ego's designed to keep it (seemingly) in charge of the show. Everything is taken from you.

Shawn Nevins

Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next, to long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you need no other guide.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 I invite you all the way in to the heart of pure being, not to get rid of any emotion, not to dramatize or glorify any emotion, but to discover what every emotion is calling for, to die to whom you think you are before who you think you are dies.

Gangaji


The foundation of all mental illness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.

Carl Jung

If you want to push someone down, lift them up first. If you want to lift someone up, push them down first.

old Chinese saying

If you are willing to realize that you cannot create your own virtues or changes; if you are willing to feel the pain of emptiness, helplessness, and inadequacy; if you are willing to wait, knowing that of yourself you can do nothing - then you will be facing Reality correctly. The reply to that stress of need is fulfillment.

Roy Masters

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Matthew 7:13-15

The entrance to purgatory is at the deepest point of hell.

Dante

Things get very clear when you are cornered.

Chogyam Trungpa

Where there is an impasse, there is a way out.

Chinese proverb

If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas

When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.

P. D. Ouspensky

Do not escape being slain, if thou art a true lover. He who is not slaughtered is just dead meat.

Sufi poet

The depth to be penetrated from the surface to the deepest layers of the human psyche is too great to be reached quickly without acute sacrifice and intense anguish.

Paul Brunton

Being in love doesn’t last. I don’t think it was ever intended to. I think it’s a sort of explosion that starts up the engine; it’s the pie crust, not the pie. THE REAL THING, I UNDERSTAND, IS SOMETHING FAR DEEPER – SOMETHING YOU CAN LIVE ON...I think you can be madly in love with someone you would be sick of after ten weeks: AND I’M PRETTY SURE YOU CAN BE BOUND HEART AND SOUL TO SOMEONE ABOUT WHOM YOU DON’T AT THAT MOMENT FEEL EXCITED, any more than you feel excited about yourself.

C.S. Lewis

Before [the higher self] sheds the sunshine of grace upon his way, it will test his perseverence in this effort and try his faith to a point of anguish which at times seems beyond endurance...If always he returns to the right path in a humble, chastened and repentant mood, he will be given the needful help to redeem his past and safeguard his future....But it comes to this in the end - that all lesser loves have necessarily to be thrust out of the heart to make room for the supreme love which it inexorably demands of him. There is little virtue in surrendering what means nothing to him, only in surrendering what means everything to him. Consequently the test will touch his heart at the tenderest points.

Paul Brunton

You will come to the Sirens, who bewitch all men who come near..."Come hither, Odysseus...stop your ship so you can hear our voices. No one has ever sailed his black ship past here without listening to the honeyed sound from our lips."

Homer, The Odyssey, Book 12


M: Yes, once you say ‘I want to find Truth,’ all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feelings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most radical transformation.
Q: Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do next?
M: It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is the decisive factor.
Q: What is the source of earnestness?
M: It is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to the earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.
Q: And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?
M: You already have all the experience you need, otherwise you would not have come here. You need not gather any more, rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method (sadhana) you follow, will merely generate more experience, but will not take you beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will enrich your mind, but the person you are will remain intact. If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental or spiritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and the freedom from the false.

Sri Nisargadatta

When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

Kabir

"All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop." This is para bhakti.

Ramana Maharshi, quoting Kabir

If God could create anything greater than soul, he would have done so.

Meister Eckhart

You think you are a person who was born, has parents and memories, and will someday die. You are not.

Sri Nisargadatta

When I have to choose between two evils, I always try to pick the one I haven't tried before.

Mae West

Better than a thousand useless words is one word that gives peace.

Buddha

When things are investigated, knowledge is extended. When knowledge is
extended, the will becomes sincere. When the will is sincere, the mind is
correct. When the mind is correct, the self is cultivated.

Confucius

The man who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies.

Abraham á Sancta Clara, 17th century German Augustinian monk

You are actually already dead. How will you know the moment of your death, if you are dead? Who will be left to watch?

Shawn Nevins

You may catch me if you can find me!

Socrates, on his deathbed

If you would learn the secret of right relations, look only for the divine in people and things, and leave the rest to God.

J. Allen Boone, Kinship with All Life

The Will of God will never take you to where the Grace of God will not protect you.

unknown

As a human being you have no choice that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears - thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single solid weight - self doubt. Like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

Ayn Rand - "Philosphy, Who Needs It?"

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

William Shakespeare

If you think your path in life must be logical, then you are path-o-logical.

Bernie Siegel

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.

Sherlock Holmes

Time has a notorious way of making sure everything doesn’t happen at once.

Unknown

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

Mark Twain

Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse.

Derwood Fincher

When the ordinary man is enlightened, he becomes a sage; when a sage is enlightened, he becomes an ordinary man.

Zen saying

The ordinary man is going astray, but in a way is enlightened; the Sravaka, however, who is enjoying the bliss of absorption for ever so many kalpas, is, from the point of view of the Bodhisatva, suffering the fires of hell, having buried himself in emptiness with no possibility of insight into the Buddha-Nature itself.

The Transmission of the Lamp

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Unknown

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.

Jane Wagner

Faith is the antidote for lack of courage and fear.

Jim Cook

When there is nothing left but God, that is when you find out that God is all you need.

Unknown

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Everyone else has an aim and purpose in life, but I alone am confused and wander aimlessly like a child with no home.

Lao Tse

Wise men in their bad hours have envied
The little people making merry like grasshoppers
In spots of sunlight hardly thinking.

Robinson Jeffers

If you walk the path you will arrive at the end of suffering. Having beheld this myself, I proclaim the Way that removes all thorns.

Dhammapada

The truth is not only that nobody has ever known, that nobody knows, and that nobody will ever know the final and fundamental purpose of creation, but that God himself does not even know - for God too has arisen out of the Absolute no less than the universe, has found himself emanated from the primeval darkness and utter silence. Even God must be content to watch the flow and not wonder why, for both God and man must merge and be absorbed when they face the Absolute for the last time.

Paul Brunton

A wandering cur who begs food and pity, pitilessly chased away by the street urchins, is transformed into a lion with a golden mane, whose roar strikes terror in the hearts of all feeble creatures.

Zen saying, on Satori

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

unknown

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing, dipped into oblivion?
If not, you will never really change.

D.H. Lawrence

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

H. L. Mencken

Worry: (Old English) to strangle, throttle, kill by violence; (Middle English) to seize by the throat and tear or lacerate, e.g., dogs or wolves attacking sheep."

Oxford English Dictionary

Everybody wants to become buddhas; nobody wants to be sentient beings.

Chogyam Trungpa

The true meaning of the precepts is that one should refrain not only
from drinking alcohol, but also from getting drunk on nirvana.

Bassui

There are two ways to live your life:
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

Gradually I have come to believe that spirituality is found in the way
we live our daily lives. It means spending time thinking about others.

Christopher Reeves

If you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C.S. Lewis

Christ said, 'Seek and ye shall find,' not 'Believe and ye shall find.'

Richard Rose

Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When
he finds, he will be troubled. When he becomes troubled he will be
astonished and he will rule over the All."

Gospel of Thomas

Light will someday split you open;
even if your life is now a cage...
love will surely burst you wide open
into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy.

Hafiz

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.    

Wendell Berry

Why do you desire to give up desire? What drove you to this laughable quandary? A desire for happiness? Wanting to be up on the universe? Better than everyone? Nature spins to chase tail! Peace be still. Soon dead and never...

Seduced by words like TRUTH and PURE. Blinded by that tertiary lust that scoops you out of your body and emotions. Poor oyster without shell! Easy prey for the hucksters that shucked you!                                                      

Charles Henderson Blake

All our knowledge only helps us to die in greater pain than the animals that know nothing.

Maurice Maeterlinck

When you try to be safe, you live your life being very, very careful, and you may wind up having no life at all.

 If I think that I am supposed to be doing anything but what I'm doing right now, I'm insane.
                                                           

Byron Katie

The ultimate understanding is that there is no ultimate understanding.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually.

Swami Vivekananda

All that is left to us by tradition is mere words. It is up to us to find out what they mean.

Ibn' Arabi

Know, 0 beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvelously made and for some great end.


Al  Ghazzali

When all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal, here in this very life.


Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

A humble man never stumbles. With bowed head he always sees that his feet are firmly planted to the ground.

Old Lakota Proverb

If your ship doesn't come in, you have to row out to meet it.

Unknown

The soul cannot live unless it is ineffably and without confusion united to God, who is truly the life eternal. Before this union in knowledge, vision, and perception it is dead, even though it is endowed with intellect and is by nature immortal…

Saint Symeon (949 - 1022)

God leaves us to our own devices. He does not force Himself on us. But He does whisper to us in a gentle voice in the hope that we will one day return to His waiting arms.

Sant Rajinder Singh

From what you want, God won't save you.

The Course in Miracles

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage,
do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding.
It may be your freedom from this optical illusion
is due to the imperfectness of your thirst.

Sohrawardi

I believe that to recognize the truth is not primarily a matter of intelligence, but a matter of character.

Erich Fromm

Beware of any activity that requires the purchase of new clothes.

Henry David Thoreau

When you sit with a pretty girl for two hours, it seems like a minute, and when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like two hours. That's relativity.

Einstein

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.

Pema Chodron

Believers in emptiness are incurable.

Nagarjuna

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it..

George Bernard Shaw

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Richard Bach

When a servant whom God loves prays to Him, God says, "O Gabriel, delay answering the need of My servant, for I love to hear his voice." When a servant whom God dislikes prays to Him, God says, "O Gabriel, answer my servant's needs, for I dislike hearing his voice."

Traditional as collected by James Fadiman & Robert Frager

You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that God's creative principle works in you.

Paramhansa Yogananda

When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The most painful thing on earth is a pleasant memory. This nostalgia that sometimes comes over us isn't an accident. It's a message. It has something to tell us. We're programmed to indulge in life, but this haunting nostalgia is a subliminal message from another plane. It's the homing instinct of the mundane mind. At its best, it's what draws us back to the Father. Nostalgia is a window to the soul, and the soul is lost to man as he lives. Nostalgia is the soul's memory of prior experience. Touching it, you touch the Eternal.

Richard Rose

Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don't believe them. Don't believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That's all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don't really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.

Anthony De Mello

Everything is already perfect, but it can be more perfect.

Suzuki Roshi

Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Emerson

The world is full of remedies, but you have no remedies until God opens a window for you. Though you are unaware of that remedy now, God will make it clear in the hour of need.

Rumi

Truth goes through three stages:

    • First it is ridiculed
    • Then it is violently opposed
    • Finally it is widely accepted as self evident

Arthur Schopenhauer

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Gandhi

Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?

Sathya Sai Baba

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

C. G. Jung

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one that makes you think.

James McCosh

It is terrifying to think how much research is needed to determine the truth of even the most unimportant fact.

Stendhal

A mathematician learns more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing; whereas a philosopher learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything.

Anonymous

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.

Tolstoy

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

Mother Teresa

We can’t be everything we want to be or do everything we want to do, but we can rearrange conditions in our life so that we can do what we can. (from The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey To Your True Calling)

Stephen Cope

He never blundered into a victory. He gained his battles in his head before he won them in the field.

Emerson on Napoleon

Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

Ian Fleming

A Hindu sage advised the Brahmin to let go of his scholarship first, then of his meditativeness, and finally of his non-meditativeness; then only would enlightenment come.

Paul Brunton

People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Emerson

I'm looking for the loopholes. (on his deathbed when asked why he was only now reading the Bible)

W.C. Fields

We don’t know a millionth of 1% about anything. Until man can make a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.

Thomas Alva Edison