Week 2024-21: Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose - Collected Quotes

"Meditation is silence, energising and fulfilling. Silent is the eloquent expression of the inexpressible." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, "The Silent Teaching: A Beginner's Guide to Meditation", 1996)

"Real joy means immediate expansion. If we experience pure joy, immediately our heart expands. We feel that we are flying in the divine freedom-sky. The entire length and breadth of the world becomes ours, not for us to rule over, but as an expansion of our consciousness. We become reality and vastness." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, The Wings of Joy: Finding Your Path to Inner Peace, 1997)

"Consciousness is the inner spark or inner link in us, the golden link within us that connects our highest and most illumined part with our lowest and most unillumined part." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, 2003)

"Do you want to make progress? If so, then take each problem not as a challenging rival, but as an encouraging friend of yours, who is helping you to arrive at your ultimate destination." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, "The Jewels of Happiness: Inspiration and Wisdom to Guide Your Life-Journey", 2015)

"Gratitude is the sweetest thing in a seeker's life- in all human life. If there is gratitude in your heart, then there will be tremendous sweetness in your eyes." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, "The Jewels of Happiness: Inspiration and Wisdom to Guide Your Life-Journey", 2015)

"In the inner life, if there is no sincerity, nothing can be achieved. And to whom are you being sincere? You are being sincere to yourself. You have a higher reality and you have a lower reality. When you become sincere, immediately you pull your lower reality up to your higher reality. Just like a magnet, your higher reality pulls up your lower reality so that it can take shelter in the higher reality." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, "The Jewels of Happiness: Inspiration and Wisdom to Guide Your Life-Journey", 2015)

"No price is too great to pay for inner peace. Peace is the harmonious control of life. It is vibrant with life-energy. It is a power that easily transcends all our worldly knowledge. Yet it is not separate from our earthly existence. If we open the right avenues within, this peace can be felt here and now." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, "The Jewels of Happiness: Inspiration and Wisdom to Guide Your Life-Journey", 2015)

"If failure has the strength to turn your life into bitterness itself, then patience has the strength to turn your life into the sweetest joy. Do not surrender to fate after a single failure. Failure, at most, precedes success." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose)

"It is only through meditation that we can get lasting peace, divine peace. If we meditate soulfully in the morning and receive peace for only one minute, that one minute of peace will permeate our whole day. And when we have a meditation of the highest order, then we really get abiding peace, light and delight. We need meditation because we want to grow in light and fulfill ourselves in light. If this is our aspiration, if this is our thirst, then meditation is the only way." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose)

"Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose)

"Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface of the sea there may be a multitude of waves but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach our own inner existence, our true existence- that is to say, the bottom of the sea. Then when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils just wash away, because inside us is solid peace. Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. When we are in our highest meditation, we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea. This is meditation." (Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose)

Week 2021-33: Happiness is...

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

"Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy." (Gretta B Palmer)

"Happiness is a by-product of helping others." (Denny Miller)

"Happiness is a function of accepting what is." (Werner Erhard)

"Happiness is a habit – cultivate it." (Elbert Hubbard)

"Happiness is a mystery like religion, and it should never be rationalized." (G K Chesterton)

"Happiness is a perfume you can't pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself." (Ralph W Emerson)

"Happiness is a result of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings, rather than an absolute amount of one or the other." (Norman Bradburn)

"Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses." (Russell Baker)

"Happiness is a state of mind where pleasure and pain caused by attachment do not exist." (Baba Hari Das)

"Happiness is a sunbeam, which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror; it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared." (Jane Porter)

"Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it." (Mark Twain)

"Happiness is a way station between too little and too much." (Channing Pollock)

"Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story." (Lev Tolstoy)

"Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions." (Aristotle)

"Happiness is attained by three things: being patient when tested, being thankful when receiving a blessing, and being repentant upon sinning." (Ibn al-Qayyim)

"Happiness is composed of misfortunes avoided." (Alphonse Karr)

"Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation." (William H Sheldon)

"Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept." (Ken Keyes, Jr.)

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory." (Ingrid Bergman)

"Happiness is having a sense of self, not a feeling of being perfect, but of being good enough and knowing that you are in the process of growth, of being, of achieving levels of joy. It’s a wonderful contentment and acceptance of who and what you are and a knowledge that the world and life are full of wondrous adventures and possibilities." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Happiness is having the freedom to be yourself." (Hilary Swank)

"Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like." (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)

"Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude." (Joseph Wood Krutch)

"Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap." (William Bennett)

"Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it." (Bernard Meltzer)

"Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it." (Alexandre Dumas)

"Happiness is like time and space - we make and measure it ourselves; it is as fancy, as big, as little, as you please, just a thing of contrasts and comparisons." (George du Marier)

"Happiness is lived in the pursuit of it, not the achievement thereof" (Thomas Jefferson)

"Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled." (Dr. Benjamin Spock)

"Happiness is never stopping to think if you are." (Palmer Sondreal)

"Happiness is not a goal, it is a byproduct." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

"Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it." (Chinese proverb)

"Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind." (Alice Meynell)

"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony." (Thomas Merton)

"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." (Margaret L Runback)

"Happiness is not being pained in body nor troubled in mind." (Thomas Jefferson)

"Happiness is not being pained in body, or troubled in mind." (Thomas Jefferson)

"Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are." (John B Sheerin)

"Happiness is not perfected until it is shared." (Jane Porter)

"Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." (Norman MacEwan)

"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions." (Dalai Lama)

"Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present." (Jim Rohn)

"Happiness is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it." (Anon)

"Happiness is not the end of life; character is." (Henry W Beecher)

"Happiness is pleasure without regret" (Lev Tolstoy)

"Happiness is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Happiness is something we reap from the seeds we sow. Plant misery seeds and that us what you reap." Stephen Richards, "Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free")

"Happiness is something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else." (Aldous Huxley)

"Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." (Ayn Rand)

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness." (Zhuangzi)

"Happiness is the cheapest thing in the world [...] when we buy it for someone else." (Paul Flemming)

"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence." (Aristotle)

"Happiness is the natural flower of duty." (Phillips Brooks)

"Happiness is the offspring of concentrated action." (Robin S. Sharma)

"Happiness is the only sanction in life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment." (George Santayana)

"Happiness is the overcoming of not Difficulties exist to be surmounted, unknown obstacles toward a known" (Ralph W Emerson)

"Happiness is the overcoming of not unknown obstacles toward a known goal." (L Ron Hubbard)

"Happiness is the space between unhappiness." (Don Marquis)

"Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late." (Robert R Updegraff)

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." (Mahatma Gandhi)

"Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside." (Sri Ramana Maharashi)

"Happiness isn’t about what happens to us - it’s about how we perceive what happens to us. It’s the knack of finding a positive for every negative, and viewing a setback as a challenge." (Lynn Peters)

"I know well that happiness is in little things." (John Ruskin)

"If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances, it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give." (Bertrand Russell)

"If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it." (Democritus)

"In all climates, under all skies, man's happiness is always somewhere else." (Giacomo Leopardi)

"Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved." (Victor Hugo)

"Perfect happiness is the absence of striving for happiness." (Chuang-Tse)

"Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit." (Hosea Ballou)

"What we call happiness is what we do not know." (Anatole France)

Week 2021-27: Meditation is ...

"Do you think that you can clear your mind by sitting constantly in silent meditation? This makes your mind narrow, not clear. Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places and at all times. That is true meditation. [...] The Tao is clear and simple, and it doesn't avoid the world." (Lao Tzu)

"In fact, the view is to look at one's own mind. Meditation is not to stray from that. Action is not to be separated from that. The fruit is to actualize that. When looking there is nothing to be looked at appearances are mind itself. When meditating there is nothing to meditate on-awareness is self-luminous. When acting there is nothing to act out-action is spontaneous. There is no fruit to accomplish - one's own mind is the buddha." (Rangjung Dorje)

"It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing." (Pema Chodron)

"Meditation does not imply only the development of single-pointed concentration, sitting in some corner doing nothing. Meditation is an alert state of mind, the opposite of sluggishness; meditation is wisdom. You should remain aware every moment of your daily life, fully conscious of what you are doing and how you are doing it." (Lama Yeshe)

"Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us." (Thich N Hanh)

"Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

"Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help." (Thich Nhat Hahn)

"Meditation is nothing but an effort to look at reality without the thinking mind - because that is the only way to see reality. If thinking is there it distorts, it corrupts. Drop the thinking mind and see reality - direct, immediate, face to face. And then there is no problem." (Osho)

"Meditation is not about finding the self - quite the contrary: it is about finding one's way beyond the self. Meditation is also not about 'expanding the mind'. It is instead about clearing away clutter created by the mind." (David M White)

"Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help." (Thich N Hahn)

"Meditation is simply getting to know your mind." (Dzogchen Ponlop)

"Meditation is the awareness that I am not the mind." (Osho)

"Meditation is the way we realize the nature of the mind." (Lama Yeshe)

"The art of meditation is neither mindless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive." (Alan Watts)

"The spirit world is able to get through to you easily when your mind is still and clear. Meditation is often referred to as 'sitting in the silence.' Whenever you want to reach Spirit from this side of life, start by sitting in the silence." (James Van Praagh)

"There are two aspects of mind; the appearances and its essence. Most people are lost in the appearances and projections without ever knowing the true nature of their experiences. Meditation is recognizing and bringing the mind home to its essence of clarity and peace." (Sogyal Rinpoche)

"Thinking is the natural activity of the mind. Meditation is not about stopping your thoughts. Meditation is simply a process of resting the mind in its natural state, which is open to and naturally aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they occur." (Yongey Rinpoche Mingyur & Eric Swanson)

"When the mind, clear and ungraspable like the sky, does not fall into partiality-this is the view. When the mind, self-aware and self-luminous like a mirror, is free from bright and dim - this is meditation. When the mind, uncontrived and natural like a child, is without negation or assertion-this is action." (Dagpo Rinpoche)

Week 2020-12

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Contarini Fleming", 1832)

"Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to become." (Arthur Schopenhauer, "Parerga and Paralipomena", 1851)

"We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Untimely Meditations", 1873)

"[The] restoration of the past is one of the most astonishing adventures of the human mind." (Herbert G Wells, "The Grisly Folk", Storyteller Magazine, 1921)

"There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped toward new ends." (Arthur C Clarke, "The City And The Stars", 1956)

"The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is [...]" (Aldous Huxley, "Island", 1962)

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

"Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image." (Bruce Lee)

"Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquility and peace." (Cicero Marcus Tullius)

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 2019-24

[#belief, #action]
“Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it.” (Chris Prentiss, “Zen and the Art of Happiness”, 2006)

[#truth, #expectations]
"An ignorant man believes that the whole universe only exists for him: as if nothing else required any consideration. If, therefore, anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, he at once concludes that the whole universe is evil. If, however, he would take into consideration the whole universe, form an idea of it, and comprehend what a small portion he is of the Universe, he will find the truth." (Maimonides, "Guide for the Perplexed", cca. 1190)

[#limits, #creativity]
"I dislike frontiers, political or intellectual, and I find that ignoring them is an essential catalyst for creative thought. Ideas should flow without hindrance in their natural course." (Michael Atiyah)

[#models, #growth]
“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” (John Stuart Mill)

[#experience, #perception]
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." (Kahlil Gibran)

[#growth, #life]
"It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow." (Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", 1974)

[#vision, #dreams]
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens." (Carl Gustav Jung)

[#happiness, #self]
"The great majority of spiritual teachings are based on the idea of seeking happiness while standing in afixated self, whereas Zen states that happiness comes through dissolving and unfixating that self. In other words, by dissolving we mean that act oj true love which is the total giving of one's being to the so called other." (Joshu Sasaki Roshi)

[#knowledge, #self]
"Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms." (Khalil Gibran)

[#learning, #mastery]
"It is known that, when we learn or train in something, we pass through the stages of shu, ha, and ri. These stages are explained as follows. In shu, we repeat the forms and discipline ourselves so that our bodies absorb the forms that our forebears created. We remain faithful to these forms with no deviation. Next, in the stage of ha, once we have disciplined ourselves to acquire the forms and movements, we make innovations. In this process the forms may be broken and discarded. Finally, in ri, we completely depart from the forms, open the door to creative technique, and arrive in a place where we act in accordance with what our heart/mind desires, unhindered while not overstepping laws." (Endō Seishirō)

Week 2018-21

[#thought, #belief]
"What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are." (Anthony Robbins, "Awaken the Giant Within")

[#identity, #quest]
"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." (William James, "The Principles of Psychology")

[#limits, #imagination]
"To realize one's limitations marks the awakening of intellectual integrity, without which imagination, integrity and assiduity are barren." (Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin)

[#thought, #happiness]
"All that we are is made up of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with a pure thought, happiness will follow him, like a shadow that never leaves him." (Dhammapada)

[#human nature, #extremes]
"People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences." (Richard Thompson)

[#truth, #meaning]
"Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning." (Anais Nin)

[#quest, #introspection]
“The nature of creation is that you have to go inside and dig out. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it’s a painful, difficult search within.” (Louise Nevelson)

[#emotions, #problem_solving]
"Emotions are far harder things to understand than algebra and geometry, yet we spend hours in elucidating mathematics and expect such a problem as that of human relationships to solve itself." (Frances G Wickes)

[#life, #perseverance]
"Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted in something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained." (Marie Curie)

[#time, #potential]
"The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities." (Stephen Hawking)

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 2017-46

[#happiness, #love]
"Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it." (Bernard Meltzer)

[#illusion, #solitude]
"Man has the illusion that he talks with the entire world from his computer. He is actually alone." (Octavian Paler)

[#happiness, #attachment]
"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess  you do have a problem."    (Richard Bach)

[#action, #growth]
"If you wish to move mountains tomorrow, you must start by lifting stones today." (African saying)

[#knowledge, #action]
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." (Maya Angelou)

[#mastery, #growth]
"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” (Ronald E. Osborn)

[#love, #completeness]
"We love in others what we lack ourselves, and would be everything but what we are.” (Richard Henry Stoddard)

[#happiness, #timing]
"Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.” (William Feather)

[#perception, #learning]
"Some people never learn the art of compromise. Everything is either black or white. They do not recognize, or will not concede, that the equally important color gray is a mixture of black and white.” (Waite Phillips)

[#hardship, #learning]
"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” (Anon)

Week 2017-45

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught." (Baba Dioum)

"Humanity seeks self-sufficiency, while nature demands relationship. Humanity wants to be invulnerable, but nature reminds it that it is bonded to all other things." (Jeremy Rifkin)

"The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes." (George Sand)

"The wind blows over the lake and stirs the surface of the water. Thus, visible effects of the invisible are manifest." (I Ching)

"There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore be content." (Swami Sivananda)

"Happiness can exist only in acceptance." (George Orwell)

"People who pride themselves on their 'complexity' and deride others for being 'simplistic' should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth." (Thomas Sowell)

"The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone." (Goethe)

"If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you'll never learn." (Ray Bradbury)

Week 2017-40

"It’s good to have an end in mind but in the end what counts is how you travel." (Orna Ross)

"What is laid down, ordered, factual, is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup." (Boris Pasternak)

"The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself." (Michel de Montaigne)

"Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious." (D. T. Suzuki)

"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony." (Thomas Merton)

"Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered." (Orson Scott Card, "Xenocide", 1991)

"Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical." (Tim Ferriss)

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." (Nelson Mandela)

"The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

"Once you realize that the road is the goal, and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple. In itself an ecstasy." (Nisargadatta Maharaj

Week 2017-36

[#love, #life]
"If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer.” (Gaston Bachelard)

[#success, #purpose]
"Two things are necessary for success in life; one is a sense of purpose and the other, a touch of madness." (John Harricharan)

[#life, #geometry]
"Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other." (Victor Hugo, Les Misrables, 1862)

[#thought, #human nature]
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." (William James)

[#journeys, #knowledge]
"A traveler without knowledge is like a bird without wings." (Musharif-Ud-Din)

[#happiness, #attitude]
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances." (Martha Washington)

[#reason, #passion]
"Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining;
And passion, unattended, is a flame that burns its own destruction." ( Khalil Gibran )

[#errors, #self control]
"When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." (Epictetus)

[#theory, #practice]
"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." (Leonardo da Vinci)

[#oder, #theory]
“All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal - a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world - two snake pits." (John Gardner, “Grendel”)

Week 2017-35

"Thus all our dignity lies in thought. By thought we must raise ourselves, not by space and time, which we cannot fill." (Blaise Pascal)

"When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and grovelling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home." (Walter Savage Landor)

"Much knowledge of divine things is lost to us through want of faith." (Heraclitus)

"Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes." (Henry Ward Beecher)

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove." (Samuel Johnson)

"Contemplation is to knowledge, what digestion is to food the way to get life out of it." (Tryon Edwards)

"A consciousness of inward knowledge gives confidence to the outward behavior, which, of all things, is the best to grace a man in his carriage." (Owen Feltham)

"If you look at the world through rose-coloured spectacles, you cannot tell which parts of it really are rosy and which parts just look rosy." (Oliver Penrose, “An Asymmetric World”)

Week 2017-31

"As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weakens and defeats you." (Morihei Ueshiba, "The Art of Peace", 1991)

"The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances." (Atisha)

"The root of compassion is compassion for oneself." (Pema Chodron)

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness." (Chuang Tzu)

"Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots." (Rumi)

"With love you don’t bargain. There, the choice is not yours. Love is a mirror, it reflects only your essence, if you have the courage to look in its face." (Rumi)

"Your knowledge should improve your heart and purge your ego." (Imam Al-Ghazali)

"When the heart is at peace for and against are forgotten." (Chuang Tzu)

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." (Pema Chodron)

"[...] you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see." (Clive S Lewis, "The Abolition of Man", 1943)

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 2017-27

"Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else." (Shunryū Suzuki)

"Think simple as my old master used to say - meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles." (Frank L. Wright)

"Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly." (Edward Albee)

"Fear is a distraction from ‘what is', from the present actual moment, preventing us from existing, from being what we are." (Vanda Scaravelli)

"Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"The power of imagination makes us infinite." (John Muir)

"Happy is he who gets to know the reasons for things." (Virgil)

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." (Lao Tzu)

"The more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves" (Roald Dahl)

"The real dirt is not outside, but inside, in our hearts. We can wash all stains with water. The only one we can’t remove is the grudge and the bad intentions sticking to our hearts." (Shams Tabrizi)

Week 2017-22

"Cleansing the mind does not require water. Practicing generosity does not require wealth." (Sam van Schaik, “Tibetan Zen”)

"The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment." (Lauren Kate Fallen)

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy." (Rumi)

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

"Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time." (Hebrew proverb)

"Silence is not an absence of sound but rather a shifting of attention toward sounds that speak to the soul." (Thomas Moore)

"People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for." (Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird")

"A person who becomes fatigued when unhappy is useless. Meeting with people should be a matter of quickly grasping their temperament and reacting appropriately […] This is a function of both the heart and words." (Miyamoto Musashi & Yamamoto Tsunetomo, "The Samurai Series: The Book of Five Rings, Bushido & Hagakure")

"The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think." (Harper Lee)

"No matter what people call you, you are just who you are. Keep to this truth. You must ask yourself how is it you want to live your life. We live and we die. This is the truth that we can only face alone. No one can help us. So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life." (Shams Tabrizi)

Week 2017-20

[#budo, #perception]
"The true value of Budo is to train the mind to see clearly and maintain spiritual strength." (Toshitsugu Takamatsu)

[#practice, #method]
"Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you." (Master Sheng Yen)

[#happiness]
"Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside." (Ramana Maharshi)

[#force, #fight]
"Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe." (John Milton)

[#patience, #expectations]
"The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter." (Paulo Coelho)

[#illusion, #wisdom]
"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." (Ludwig Börne)

[#knowledge]
"All our knowledge is ourselves, to know." (Alexander Pope)

[#knowledge, #learning]
"Each excellent thing, once learned, serves for a measure of all other knowledge." (Philip Sidney)

[#certainty, #knowledge]
"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little." (Agnes de Mille)

[#mind, #attachment]
"What do you hang on the walls of your mind?" (Eve Arnold)

Week 2017-19

"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)

"When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." (Alston Chase)

"It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection." (Bhagavad Gita)

"Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance." (Osho)

"If you wish to be a warrior prepare to get broken, if you wish to be an explorer prepare to get lost, and if you wish to be a lover prepare to be both." (Anon)

"Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation." (Sid Taylor)

"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience." (James Boswell)

"There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things." (Idris Parry)

"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt." (John Muir)

"Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose." (Hermann Hesse)

Week 2017-11

[#growth, #reality]
"Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven... Build, therefore, your own world." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”, 1836)

[#happiness, #quest]
"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost." (H. Jackson Browne)

[#knowledge, #chaos]
"Don't worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?" (Rumi)

[#confidence, #knowledge]
"Confidence is not about being always right, but always knowing what to do when things go wrong." (Anon)

[#learning]
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” (Thomas H. Huxley)

[#education]
"Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves." (Abbe Dimnet, "Art of Thinking", 1928)

[#love, #wisdom]
"Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love." (Shams Tabrizi)

[#learning, #truth]
"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue." (Antisthenes)

[#education, #inquiry]
"The journey for an education starts with a childhood question." (David L Finn)

[#learning, #perception]
"Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning." (Peter Senge)