Week 2020-13

"The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful can be adorned or ornamented. A great height is just as sublime as a great depth, except that the latter is accompanied with the sensation of shuddering, the former with one of wonder. Hence the latter feeling can be the terrifying sublime, and the former the noble." (Immanuel Kant, "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime", 1764)

"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves." (William Hazlitt, "Criticisms on Art", 1844)
 
"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change." (Herbert G Wells, "The Time Machine", 1895)

"Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better." (Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World Revisited", 1932)

"The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two." (Ken Wilber, "No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth", 1979)

"In everyday life, you will find that your boss, your lover, or your government often try to manipulate you. They propose to you a ‘game’ in the form of a choice in which one of the alternatives appears definitely preferable. Having chosen this alternative, you are faced with a new game, and very soon you find that your reasonable choices have brought you to something you never wanted: you are trapped. To avoid this, remember that acting a bit erratically may be the best strategy. What you lose by making some suboptimal choices, you make up for by keeping greater freedom." (David Ruelle, "Chance and Chaos", 1991)

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it. " (Terry Pratchett, "Monstrous Regiment", 2004)

"There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised." (Gordon Livingston, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now", 2009)

"Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all you are not, and to believe in your own individuality." (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)

"We are generally more effectually persuaded by reasons we have ourselves discovered than by those which have occurred to others."(Blaise Pascal)

Week 2019-25

"To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders." (Lao Tzu)

"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)

"It is in virtue that happiness consists, for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious." (Zeno)

"Mind alone is the seed of everything.” (Saraha)

"All phenomena are mind itself, because appearances are reflections." (Mahasiddha Birwapa)

"All outer and inner phenomena are designations of the mind. Except in the mind, they exist nowhere else." (Sambuti)

"The transmigration of life takes place in one’s mind. Let one therefore keep the mind pure, for what a man thinks, so he becomes." (Upanishads)

"We are shaped by our thoughts;
we become what we think." (Gautama Buddha, "Dhammapada")

"Absolute truth is not an object of the mind;
Mind is relative truth." (Shantideva)

"The universality of change, when completely understood, is the seeing into the heart of all things, and the mind that thus understands is the mind that truly seeks the way." (Nagarjuna)

Week 2017-47

"A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets." (Arthur C. Clarke)

"Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself." (Osho)

"People tend to assume everyone else should think the same way they do, and this contributes to much human misery." (Keith Cowan)

"The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions." (Bishop Mandell Creighton)

"A wise man takes a step at a time; he establishes one foot before he takes up the other: an old place should not be forsaken recklessly." (Sanskrit saying)

“No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.” (Goethe)

“Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” (Chuang-Tzu)

“In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.” (Rene Descartes)

“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.” (Goethe)

“We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative.” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, 1905)

Week 2017-28

"Realizing that our inability to control life is not the same as having no way to navigate it, leads to freedom and liberation. Just because I can't control the sea doesn't mean I can't learn how to swim in it." (Rami Shapiro)

"With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love." (Rumi)

"What worries you, masters you." (John Locke)

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ( Nathaniel Hawthorne )

"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears." (Michel de Montaigne)

"We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." (Eric Hoffer)
  
"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace." ( Karl Kraus)

"If you don't like something, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it." (Mary Engelbreit)

"Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow." (Tony Schwartz)

"To be truly happy and contented, you must let go of the idea of what it means to be truly happy or content." (Confucius)

Week 2017-18

"To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not." (Akhenaton)

"The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." (Herbert Agar)

"An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance." (Richard Hugo, "Triggering Town")

"We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are." (Gene Roddenberry)

"Belief can convert the mundane into the miraculous." (Charles F Glassman)

"Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective." ( Hunter S. Thompson )

"Staring at the light of another blinds the view of our own." (Charles F Glassman)

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides." (André Malraux)

"I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves." (Louise L. Hay)

Week 2017-17

"Using someone else’s ruler to measure your self-worth will always leave you short." (Charles F Glassman)

"Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free.   
Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing.  
This is the ultimate." (Chuang Tzu)

"When meditation is mastered,  
the mind is unwavering,  
like the flame of a lamp in a windless place." (Bhagavad Gita)

"What cannot be known is more revealing than what can." (John D. Barrow, "Impossibility", 1998)

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people." (Carl Jung)

"All great things have their origin in that which is small." (Lao Tzu)

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. (Henry David Thoreau)

"Exploring your imagination is the first step to understanding your heart." (Anon)

"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do." (Voltaire)

"It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable—he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated." (Leo Tolstoy)

Week 2017-09

[#values]
"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." (Henry David Thoreau)

[#knowledge, #quest]
"There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out." (Russian saying)

[#attachment, #freedom]
"Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of a Liberated One." (Huang Po)

[#hope, #focus]
"I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest." (Dalai Lama)

[#change, #strength]
"When you blame others, you give up your power to change." (Dr. Robert Anthony)

[#hope, #fear]
"We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears." (François de La Rochefoucauld)

[#learning, #experience]
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." (Douglas Adams)

[#knowledge, #unknown]
"People value that part of knowledge which is known. They do not know how to avail themselves of the Unknown in order to reach knowledge. Is this not misguided?" (Zhuang Zhou)

[#faith, #hope]
"Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand." ( Thomas Aquinas )

[#success, #dreams]
"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success." (Swami Vivekananda)

Week 2017-04

"Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely that you will step up and take responsibility for making it so." (Noam Chomsky)

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty." (Frank Herbert, "Dune Chronicles: Chapterhouse")

"It is not wisdom but ignorance that teaches men presumption. Genius may sometimes be arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as knowledge." (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." (Samuel Johnson)

"All the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive, but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and passions of humanity." (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values." (Dalai Lama)

"The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them." (Henry Bolingbroke)

"Keeping an open mind is a virtue, but not so open that your brains fall out." (James Oberg)

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." (Anaïs Nin)

Week 2017-02

"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds." (Nicholas Sparks)

"Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. That's what life's all about. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain." (Frank Herbert, "Dune")

"No literature is sound, no philosophy of action workable, if it doesn’t take a hard look at itself." (John W. Campbell)

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." (C. S. Lewis)

"You cannot create experience. You must undergo it." (Albert Camus)

"Understanding arises from reducing one type of reality into another." (Claude Lévi-Strauss)

"Forgiving someone doesn’t give them a free pass. It gives you a free pass to move on." (Charles F Glassman)

"Your strength is in your calmness, in the clarity of your mind. Strength comes from putting the negative aside without reacting. Win in calmness, in consciousness, in balance. Win without fighting." (Yogi Amrit Desai)

"Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject - the actual enemy is the unknown.: (Thomas Mann)

"Do not destroy what you cannot create." (Leó Szilárd)

Week 2016-39

"Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full."(Rumi)

"We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility." (Rabindranath Tagore)

"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present." (Albert Camus)

”The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next." (Mignon McLaughlin)

"There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it’s best to know the rules and only break them if you’re playing a different game and following those rules." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts." (Philip Arnold)

"Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds." (Anon)

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." (Kahlil Gibran)

"There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." (Alfred North Whitehead)

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste." (Richard Brodie)