Week 2023-39: Dan Millman - Collected Quotes

"Everything you'll ever need to know is within you; the secrets of the universe are imprinted on the cells of your body." (Dan Millman, "Way of the Peaceful Warrior", 1980)

"Life is not a private affair. A story and its lessons are only made useful if shared." (Dan Millman, "Way of the Peaceful Warrior", 1980)

"No amount of knowledge will nourish or sustain your spirit, it can never bring you ulimate happiness or peace. Life requires more that knowledge; it requires intense feeling and constant energy. Life demands right action if knowledge is to come alive." (Dan Millman, "Way of the Peaceful Warrior", 1980)

"To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new." (Dan Millman, "Way of the Peaceful Warrior", 1980)

"When you resist what happens, your mind begins to race; the same thoughts that impinge upon you are actually created by you." (Dan Millman, "Way of the Peaceful Warrior", 1980)

"Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness." (Dan Millman, "Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior" (ed. Dan Millman, 1991) 

"Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions." (Dan Millman, "No Ordinary Moments: A Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Daily Life", 1992)

"Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception." (Dan Millman, "No Ordinary Moments: A Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Daily Life", 1992)

"Peaceful warriors have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water clears. They remain unmoving until the right time, so the right action arises by itself. They do not seek fulfillment, but wait with open arms to welcome all things." (Dan Millman, "No Ordinary Moments: A Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Daily Life", 1992)

"Energy follows thought; we move toward, but not beyond, what we can imagine. What we assume, expect, or believe creates and colors our experience. By expanding our deepest beliefs about what is possible, we change our experience of life." (Dan Millman, "The Life You Were Born to Live: A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose", 1993)

"Choice means giving up something you want for something else you want more." (Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit: Simple, Powerful Truths for Making Life Work", 1995) 

"Faith is our direct link to universal wisdom, reminding us that we know more than we have heard or read or studied that we have only to look, listen, and trust the love and wisdom of the Universal Spirit working through us all." (Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit: Simple, Powerful Truths for Making Life Work", 1995) 

"Process transforms any journey into a series of small steps, taken one by one, to reach any goal. Process transcends time, teaches patience, rests on a solid foundation of careful preparation, and embodies trust in our unfolding potential." (Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit: Simple, Powerful Truths for Making Life Work", 1995) 

"So be gentle with yourself; show yourself the same kindness and patience you might show a young child - the child you once were. If you won't be your own friend, who will be? If, when playing an opponent, you are also opposing yourself, you will be outnumbered." (Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit: Simple, Powerful Truths for Making Life Work", 1995) 

"So trust the process of your life unfolding, and know with certainty, through the peaks and valleys of your journey, that your soul rests safe and secure in the arms of God." (Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit: Simple, Powerful Truths for Making Life Work", 1995)

"Unless the desire to change remains strong, body and mind tend to return to old, familiar patterns. It takes time-from three to six months-for old habits to become obsolete. By the end of that time, you'll have adapted to a new pattern. In a sense, you'll have found a new way of life." (Dan Millman, "The Laws of Spirit: Simple, Powerful Truths for Making Life Work", 1995) 

"Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is... The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds." (Dan Millman, "Everyday Enlightenment: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth", 1998)

"Masters of one art have mastered all because they have mastered themselves. With dominion over both mind and muscle, they demonstrate power, serenity, and spirit. They not only have talent for their sport, they have an expanded capacity for life. The experts shine in the competitive arena; the masters shine everywhere." (Dan Millman, "Body Mind Mastery: Training for Sport and Life", 1999)

"Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort-expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals." (Dan Millman, "Living on Purpose", 2000)

"I learned that we can do anything, but we can't do everything... at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything." (Dan Millman, "Living on Purpose", 2000)

"Simplicity has power. Founding our life on constructive, positive behavior is the simplest, most direct, and powerful approach I've ever found-simple, but not easy." (Dan Millman, "Living on Purpose", 2000)

Week 2017-42

"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?" (Henry David Thoreau)

"I’ve learned through a series of trials and errors that the median space is actually what's missing in our daily walk." (Carlos Wallace)

"There is no such thing as a miracle which violates natural law. There are only occurrences which violate our limited knowledge of natural law." (Saint Augustine)

"The world is a projection of your mind. Good mind, good world. Bad mind, bad world. No mind, no world." (Swami Parthasarathy)

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." (H. L. Mencken)

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." (Pablo Picasso)

"The future is nothing but a present to organize. You do not have to forecast it, but to allow it." ( Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable." (Mary Oliver)

"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature." (Jacob Bronowski, Universities Quarterly, 1956)

"The hours when we are absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live [...] .These are the only hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance." ( Richard Jefferies )

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 2017-29

"If you are looking for a friend who is faultless, you will be friendless." (Rumi)

"This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness." (Mary Oliver)

"A snowflake never falls in the wrong place." (Zen saying)

"It is useless to fight against people’s rigid ways, or to argue against their irrational concepts. You will only waste time and make yourself rigid in the process. The best strategy is to simply accept rigidity in others, outwardly displaying deference to their need for order. On your own, however, you must work to maintain your open spirit, letting go of bad habits and deliberately cultivating new ideas." (Robert Greene)

"In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet." (Bertrand Russell)

"Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there - in the imperfection is perfect reality." (Shunryū Suzuki)

"We rarely hear the inward music, but we're all dancing to it nevertheless." (Rumi)

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." (Khalil Gibran)

"The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world." (Marianne Williamson)

"We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding." (Edward Teller)

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 2017-15

"If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher." (Rudolf Steiner)

"We come to love not by finding the perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." (Sam Keen)
  
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't." (Blaise Pascal)

"Student: Master tell me, is death the end or is it the beginning?
Master: Tell me, is the water in the river which flows, new or old?" (Zen story)

"True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even the smallest, least significant thought, word and action has real consequences throughout the universe." (Sogyal Rinpoche)

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light." (Norman B. Rice)

"Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." (Umberto Eco)

Week 2016-46

"Every person has only one purpose: to find perfection in goodness. Therefore, only that knowledge is necessary which leads us to this." (Leo Tolstoy)

"More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

"Change happens in the boiler room of our emotions - so find out how to light their fires." (Jeff Dewar)

"Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning." (Bergen Evans)

"If all knowledge were good, then pursuit of every sort of knowledge would be useful. But many false meditations are disguised as good and useful knowledge; therefore, be strict in selecting the knowledge you want to acquire." (Leo Tolstoy)

"Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self - a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change - the willful act of making the change, doing something." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and create a new ending." (Maria Robinson)

"The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life." (Seneca the Younger)

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." (David Russell)

"You should study more to understand that you know little." (Michel de Montaigne)