♦ That very seeing does not see Itself at all. How can something that cannot see itself See another?

- Nagarjuna

♦ A monk asked Shigui, "What is the first principle?" Shigui said, "What you just asked is the second principle."

- Zen’s Chinese Heritage

♦ Silent about virtue and swift to act wrongly, one who does not slander others may still be called good.
More vile than violating virtue and committing crime is slandering a man, then smiling to his face.

- Tirukkural 19: 181-182

♦ If a man considers that he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

- Ramana Maharshi

♦ When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.

- Sufi epigram

♦ Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

- Sigmund Freud

♦ Why can't life's problems hit us when we're seventeen and know everything?

- A.C. Jolly.

♦ Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

♦ Avert the danger before it arises. Today is yesterday's pupil.

- Thomas Fuller.

♦ Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

- Henry Miller

♦ Your son is at five your master, at ten your servant, at fifteen your double, and after that, your friend or foe, depending on his bringing up.

- Hasdai ibn Crescas

♦ A man should love his wife as himself and honor her more than himself.

- Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 62b

♦ As cited in "Jewish Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

- Erica Jong

♦ Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.

- Benjamin Franklin

♦ One should not stand at the foot of a sick person's bed, because that place is reserved for the guardian angel.

- Jewish folk saying

♦ The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice. They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith. They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom.

- Rav Kook

♦ A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.

- Albert Schweitzer

♦ A poor devotee points to the sky and says, "God is up there." An average devotee says, "God dwells in the heart as the Inner Master." The best devotee says, "God alone is and everything I perceive is a form of God."

- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

♦ Selfishness may be sweet only for oneself, but no harmony of the whole can come from it.

- Tenrikyo Osashizu

♦ We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion. Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience. Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.

- Benjamin Cardozo

♦ Every man has three characters: that which he shows, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

- Alphonse Karr

♦ The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

♦ That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion because it embraces all others.

- Sri Aurobindo

♦ Perfection has one grave defect; it is apt to be dull.

- Somerset Maugham

♦ We should remember that it doesn’t matter how stuck things may seem, for everything changes. It is the fear that difficult times won’t end that makes us nervous. Let go of fears and be ready to move into the future

- Anonymous

♦ Your son is at five your master, at ten your servant, at fifteen your double, and after that, your friend or foe, depending on his bringing up.

♦ What is a friend? A single soul shared by two people.

- Aristotle

♦ "The layer that is above the sky and below the earth, which is described as being situated between the earth and the sky and which is indicated as the symbol of the past, present and future, where is that situated?" - bamboozled even the great Vedic men of letters

- Gargi

♦ If a person closes his eyes to avoid giving [any] charity, it is as if he committed idolatry.

- Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 68a

♦ The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

- Abraham Lincoln

♦ Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.

♦ One of the secrets of life is to make stepping-stones out of stumbling blocks.

- Jack Penn

♦ Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.

- Vernon Law

♦ O god, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains. That we should with joy pleasure revel and applause transform ourselves into beasts.

- Shakespeare.

♦ To have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

- Shakespeare, As you like it

♦ (Venus) No, that same wicked bastard of Venus that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses every one's eyes because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love.

- Shakespeare

♦ Stopping at third base adds no more runs than striking out.

- Unknown

♦ People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.

- George Allen

♦ It is quite possible to work without results, but never will there be results without work.

- Unknown

♦ The beauties of the world are best seen by those who strive to reach them.

- Unknown

♦ It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

- Henry David Thoreau

♦ To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

♦ Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

- E.M. Forster

♦ "Come to the edge."
"We can't. We're afraid."
"Come to the edge."
"We can't. We will fall!"
"Come to the edge."
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.

- Guillaume Apollinaire

♦ Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

- Dr. Laura Schlessinger

♦ To please all is an impossible aim, and to escape some criticism is an unattainable goal.

- M. Ibn Ezra, "Shirat Yisrael"

♦ We should be too big to take offence and too noble to give it.

- Abraham Lincoln

♦ Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

- Andre Gide

♦ We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

♦ If I knew God, I would be God.

♦ When man completes a product, his relation to it ends; but God's power continues to permeate His creatures.

- Shneor Zalman, Tanya

♦ Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

- George Washington

♦ You are not stuck where you are unless you decide to be.

♦ Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

- G.K. Chesterton

♦ A man cannot say to the Angel of Death, "Wait till I make up my accounts."

- Ecclesiastes Rabbah 8

♦ The door of opportunity won't open unless you do some pushing.

- Anonymous

♦ Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

- Mark Twain

♦ Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

- William Penn

♦ Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.

- Robert Newton Peck

♦ Revelation is the silent, imperceptible manifestation of God in history. It is the still, small voice: it is the inevitableness, the regularity of nature.

- Herbert Loewe, "Rabbinic Anthology," 1938

♦ Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

- Mark Twain

♦ Who finds a faithful friend finds a treasure.

- Ben Sira 6:14

♦ For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.

- Anonymous

♦ Anger deprives a sage of his wisdom, a prophet of his vision.

- Simeon b. Lakish, Talmud: Pesahim

♦ We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

- George Gershwin

♦ Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.

- Will Durant

♦ Winners have simply formed the habit of doing things losers don't like to do.

- Albert Gray

♦ The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp.

- John Berry

♦ A miracle cannot prove what is impossible; it is useful only to confirm what is possible.

♦ Let a good man do good deeds with the same zeal that the evil man does bad ones.

♦ When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.

- Sydney Smith

♦ If you have one eye on yesterday and one eye on tomorrow, you’re going to be cockeyed today.

♦ Mind over matter is good news only if your mind is sound.

♦ The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God.

- Spinoza, "Ethics"

♦ Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

- Baruch Spinoza

♦ Your search among books, word upon word, may lead you to the depths of knowledge, but it is not the way to receive the reflection of your true self.

When you have thrown off your ideas as to mind and body, the original truth will fully appear. Zen is simply the expression of truth; therefore longing and striving are not the true attitudes of Zen.

- Dogen

♦ There is a difference between watching the mind and controlling the mind. Watching the mind with a gentle, open attitude allows the mind to settle down and come to rest. Trying to control the mind, or trying to control the way one's spiritual practice will unfold, just stirs up more agitation and suffering.

♦ God had a purpose in the life of Saddam Hussain. Determination and commitment are very noble qualities and when the same are used for achieving misconceived goals, God again fails in the great experiment of human transformation. A splendid flower alas! has gone the way of the dust. I pity him for having lost his goal and for the treatment by others of the human race:when did real Compassion the greatest Archetype of Being ever succeed? May he Saddam Hussain flower again and prove the real intention of the Divine in his being. Dust however needs no effort to multiply! and why are the big brothers over there think too eager to do the same and so fast?

- Sri K. C. Narayana

♦ Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.

- Aldous Huxley

♦ When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

- Abraham Maslow

♦ Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will, and act.

♦ Our personality, which is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience, changes without ceasing. By changing, it prevents any state, although superficially identical with another, from ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our duration is irreversible.

The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have been to produce it before it was produced--an absurd hypothesis which is its own refutation. Even so with regard to the moments of our life, of which we are the artisans. Each of them is a kind of creation.

- Bergson

♦ Three sins none can escape on any day: sinful thoughts, the presumption that God must answer our prayers, and dust of slander.

♦ The mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work unless it's open.

♦ I was strongest when I laughed at my weakness.

- Elmer Diktonius

♦ For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

♦ You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

- Abraham Lincoln

♦ It is integrity that invests man with immortality, and bestows upon him the privilege of direct communion with God.

♦ There's an old saying: "Give a man a fish and you can feed him for a day. TEACH him to fish and you feed him for life!"

♦ "Purpose and principle, clearly understoood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs."

- Dee Hock

♦ Every portion of matter can be thought of as a garden full of plants, or as a pond full of fish. But every branch of the plant, every part of the animal, and every drop of its vital fluids, is another such garden, or another such pool. [...] Thus there is no uncultivated ground in the universe; nothing barren, nothing dead.

- (Monadology, §67,69)

♦ "What difference does it make if one sings like a donkey, as long as people say it is a nightingale?"

- Nassr Eddin.

♦ To explain the normal by means of the abnormal is a modern hobby

- Dr. K.C.Varadachari (dreams)

♦ Dream is a deep disease and not a common ailment. The reason is not far to seek; the symbolic reintegration in the life of the primitive is un-developed or under-developed, just as in the case of infants.

- Dr. K.C.Varadachari

♦ The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

- George Santayana

♦ Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes.

- Mary Martin

♦ Reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our heart.

- Apocrypha: Wisdom of Solomon

♦ [Beauty] Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty. It merely moves from their faces to their hearts.

- Martin Buxbaum

♦ [Ability and Motivation] Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

♦ [Dreams] Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

- Langston Hughes

♦ [Ethics-Postponement] He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

- Horace

♦ Someone who practices only bhakti yoga is like a blind man who cannot see where to go, and in his enthusiasm wanders off in the wrong direction. Someone who practices only gnana yoga, on the other hand, is like a lame man who can see the distant destination but, because his knowldge remains only theoretical, makes no progress towards it. However, if the love and energy of the bhakta is combined with the wisdom and discrimination of the gnani, seekers are sure to reach their destination.

- Hindu teaching story

♦ I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.

- Rumi

♦ In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.

- John Churton Collins

♦ [TRUE FRIENDSHIP] The bonds that good men share, like good bound books, Reveal new enjoyments at each new encounter. The object of friendship is not merrymaking But a stern rebuking when friends go astray. It is not constant meeting and companionship But mutual sensibilities that confer the alliance of friendship. Friendship is not seen on a friendly face, But felt deep within a friendly heart.

- Tirukkural, 79:783-86

♦ No fool is more foolish than one who eagerly expounds His learning to others while failing to follow it himself.

- Tirukkural 84:833-834

♦ The great religions are the ships, Poets are the life boats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard. That is good for business, isn’t it Hafiz.

- Hafiz

♦ I speak for all but know one knows me. It was ok then and it is ok now. Ages pass, I stay the same. If I speak out I am beaten. When the veil’s up, no one sees. The dog is under the haystack. Why talk and make enemies?

- Kabir

♦ "Into a lion’s coat rushes a goat. You will recognize him by his voice: the word reveals.

- Kabir

♦ If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM."

- Lyndon B. Johnson

♦ One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

- Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

♦ Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

- Einstein

♦ I have yet not been able to answer the great question that has never been answered: What does a woman want?

- Sigmund Freud

♦ Always laugh when you can; it is cheap medicine.

- Lord Byron

♦ "Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

- Mark Twain

♦ "When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied."

- Herophilus (100 BC)

♦ "To be appreciated is one of the strongest basic human needs."

- C Jung

♦ "A newspaper should be the maximum of information, and the minimum of comment."

- Richard Cobden (1804-1865) English politician

♦ After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

- Oscar Wilde

♦ You miss 100% of the shots you never take.

- Wayne Gretzky

♦ The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.

- Brian Tracy

♦ "When you hire people that are smarter than you are, you prove you are smarter than they are."

- R. H. Grant

♦ If you want to improve your life radically, check this out, "I have been listening to "The Dive" now for 30 days and I feel great!"

- Jim Blair

♦ "You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses."

- Ziggy

♦ "Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."

- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

♦ "Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

♦ Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

- T.S. Eliot

♦ Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.

♦ Fools paradise is a still paradise of sorts.

- Sri K. C. Narayana.

♦ It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

♦ Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.

- Helen Keller

♦ To avoid habits without replacement is difficult as the ‘doer’ dies then.

- Sri K. C. Narayana

♦ Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

- Winston Churchill

♦ Byron, while dedicating the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to his friend, John Hobhouse, wrote: "To one whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusted in peril - to a friend often tried and never found wanting.

♦ "I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

♦ It is human to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

- Anatole France

♦ Three men went into the jungle on different occasions and saw a chameleon. "A chameleon is red," said the first man. "No a chameleon is green," said the second man. "Nonsense, a chameleon is brown," said the third man. Those who disagree about the nature of God are like these three men.

- Hindu Teaching Story

♦ Walking the spiritual path is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques

♦ Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.

- Soren Kierkegaard

♦ If a commandment comes your way, don't delay.

- Mekhilta, Bo

♦ [BUDDHISM] When you see with discernment, 'All fabrications are inconstant'--you grow disenchanted with stress. This is the path to purity.
When you see with discernment, 'All fabrications are stressful' -- you grow disenchanted with stress. This is the path to purity.
When you see with discernment, 'All phenomena are not-self' -- you grow disenchanted with stress. This is the path to purity.

- Dhammapada, 20

♦ Man is by nature a mystic.

- Kook, HaMahshaba HaYisraelit