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 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 2019-22

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

"The helps offered to improve the mind consist in certain ways of thinking which facilitate thinking." (Gottfried W Leibniz)

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” (Isaac Asimov)

"One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded." (Heraclitus)

"If you want truly to understand something, try to change it." (Kurt Lewin)

"Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war." (Sir Winston Churchill)

"This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of light, but by the aspect and law of nature." (Lucretius)

"One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded." (Heraclitus)

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 2019-23

"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized." (Leonard Mlodinow, "The Drunkard's Walk", 2008)

“There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.” (Albert Camus)

"In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice." (Boethius)

“Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself.” (Robert G Ingersoll)

"No great thing comes without a curse" (Sophocles)

"All truth is a shadow except the last. But every truth is substance in its own place, though it be but shadow in another place. And the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance." (Isaac Pennington)

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

Week 2019-21

"The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief." (Adyashanti)

"Healing of the physical without the change in the mental and spiritual aspects brings little real help to the individual in the end. How true, because the mind and the body imprint and imitate each other. What we think, we become. What we become, we think. It's an insidious process that can predispose us to illness or it can lead us to health." (Edgar Cayce)

"The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Imagination is the first step in creation whether in words or trifles. The mental pattern must always precede the material form." (William W Atkinson)

"Mental activity is like a deadly poisonous cobra. If we don't interfere with a cobra, how poisonous it may be, it simply goes its own away." (Ajahn Chah)

"To think that the world can ever change without changes in our mental models is folly." (Joseph Jaworski)

"Do not place hope in finding a secret technique. Polish the mind through ceaseless training; that is the key to effective techniques." (Kyuzo Mifune)

"Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature." (Daisetsu T Suzuki)

"The mind must always be in the state of 'flowing,' for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it means death." (Takuan)

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

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 2018-07

[#timing, #understanding]
"The developed structures at each point in the game are the past, and the possibilities existing in that situation are the future. Together they constitute the present. Properly understanding the past and future in this sense is the essence of good timing." (W. Cobb)

[#religion, #life]
"Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language." (Hilaire Belloc)

[#opportunity, #action]
"The frog lives by the side of the fragrant lotus, but it is the bee who gets the honey." (Ramana Maharshi)

[#education]
"What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give." (Phyllis D James)

[#sorrow, #joy]
"Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy." (Oscar Wilde)

[#hope, #wisdom]
"When hope is born, it is necessary to unite courage with wisdom. Only then is it possible to avoid violence." (Óscar Arias Sánchez)

[#reason, #control]
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason." (George O Welles)

[#change, #habit]
"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)

[#truth, #experiment]
"Heresies are experiments in man's unsatisfied search for truth." (Herbert G Wells)

[#learning, #change]
"In times of change, the learner will inherit the earth while the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists." (Eric Hoffer)

Week 2018-08: Aphorisms on Learning

"One of the things that limits our learning is our belief that we already know something." (L David Marquet, "Turn the Ship Around!", 2013)

“More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind. “ (Eric Butterworth)

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.” (Henry D Thoreau)

“No one has completed his education who has not learned to live with an insoluble problem.” (Edmund J Kiefer)

“A man eminent in learning has not even a little virtue if he fears to practice it. What precious things can be shown to a blind man when he holds a lamp in his hand?” (Hitopadesa)

“Learning dissipates many doubts, and causes things otherwise invisible to be seen, and is the eye of everyone who is not absolutely blind.” (Hitopadesa)

“He who has more learning than goodness is like a tree with many branches and few roots, which the first wind throws down; whilst he whose works are greater than his knowledge is like a tree with many roots and fewer branches, which all the winds of heaven cannot uproot.” (Talmud)

“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.” (Shakti Gawain)

“Learn to depend upon yourself by doing things in accordance with your own way of thinking.” (Grenville Kleiser)

“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.” (Dame Rebecca West)

“To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.” (Henri Frederic)

"To learn in order to know is scandalous curiosity." (Bernard of Clairvaux, "Sermones in Cantica")

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 2017-44

"The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational." (A. N. Wilson)

"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." (G. M. Trevelyan)

"Some people study all their life, and at their death have learned everything but to think." (Demergu Dewar)

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it." (Rabindranath Tagore)

"The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas." (George Santayana)

"An educated mind is useless without a focused will, and dangerous without a loving heart." (Winfried Deijmann)

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it." (Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost." (Khalil Gibran)

"Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck." (Frank Herbert)

"One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret." (Barry Lopez)

Week 2017-43

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." (Michael Porter)

"The greater is the circle of light, the greater is the boundary of the darkness by which it is confined." (Joseph Priestley)

"One of the elementary rules of nature is that, in the absence of a law prohibiting an event or phenomenon, it is bound to occur with some degree of probability. To put it simply and crudely: Anything that can happen does happen." (Kenneth W Ford)

"To choose a road, to stop habitually and ask whether you have not gone astray, that is the true method.” (Louis Pasteur)

"Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that's obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right.” (Simon Sinek)

"The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favor with the social man we are obliged to be." (William Bolitho)

"We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object." (Sherry Turkle)

"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in." (Alan Alda)

“He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign." (Victor Hugo)

"Nothing is more powerful for your future than being a gatherer of good ideas and information. That’s called doing your homework." (Jim Rohn)

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 2017-41

"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." (Rabindranath Tagore)

"The knowledge which lies behind is our natural help to that which lies before." (Peter M Latham)

"Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more." (Terry Pratchett)

"Knowing what you know, be serene also, like a mountain; and do not be distressed by misfortune. Knowledge without serenity is an unlit candle; together they are honey-comb; honey without wax is a noble thing; wax without honey is only fit for burning." (Hakim Sanai)

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." (Philip K. Dick)

"The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give." (Philip K. Dick)

"Search a beautiful heart, not a beautiful face. Beautiful things are not always good, but good things are always beautiful." (Sufi saying)

"Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and being comfortable with not knowing." (Eckhart Tolle)

"A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life." (Winston Churchill)

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." (Albert Einstein)

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 2017-39

"[...] the truth is strength that lies in the interior of the warrior: in his heart, his mind and his spirit [.] The heart is essential in helping the intellect to understand the spirit." (Miyamoto Musashi, “Book of Five Rings”)

"There are more fake guides, teachers in the world than stars. The real guide is the one who makes you see your inner beauty, not the one who wants to be admired and followed." ( Shams Tabrizi )

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting." (Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”)

"One is never so strong as when one is broken." (Hazrat Inayat Khan, “Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening”)

"There is no greater power than the one others do not believe you possess." (Luis Marques, “Book of Orion”)

"I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can." ( Lucille Ball )

"If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love. (Carl Jung)

"Only love expands intelligence. To live in love is to accept the other and the conditions of his existence as a source of richness, not as opposition, restriction or limitation." (Humberto Maturana)

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt." (H. L. Mencken)

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."  (Helen Keller)

Week 2017-38

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." (Eden Phillpotts, “A Shadow Passes”, 1918)

"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world." (Schopenhauer)

"Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of a grandeur not fit for us." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart (Helen Keller )

"[Nansen:] The Way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is confusion. When you have really reached the true Way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?" (Mumon Ekai, Mumonkan)

"The most inspiring leaders are not those who do their job, but those who pursue a calling." (Chris Gardner)

"If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams and endeavors to live the life they have imagined, they will meet with a success ‘unexpected in common hours’." (Henry David Thoreau)

"The miracle is that the universe created a part of itself to study the rest of it, and that this part in studying itself finds the rest of the universe in its own natural inner realities." (John C. Lilly)