“You are the average of the 5 people you spend most of your time with.”

“80 percent of your results come from 20% of your actions.”

“Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.”

“Live with purpose, live by priority and live for productivity.”

“But I believed that the only way to become a leading man, is to treat yourself like a leading man and work your ass off!”

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitudes from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

“There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.”

“Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.”

“The greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best in people is by appreciation and encouragement.”

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point if view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

“Success is...
Knowing your purpose in life,
Growing to reach your maximum potential, and
Sowing seeds that benefit others.”

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

“This body of ours is just a garage where we park our soul.”

“Get on purpose, get off of your outcome, get off of how well you do and how much you’re being paid, get off of all of that and get on to what are you here for?”

“As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe you start to rot.”

“The greatest mistake one can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”

“If you don’t like the crop you are reaping, check the seed you are sowing”

“Most people produce only when they feel like it. Leaders produce even when they don’t feel like it.”

“If you meet someone who can profit by your experience, you should share. But if you are merely a wanderer in a crowd of strangers, it is wisdom to be silent.”

“One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.”

“The mind comes, finally, to take on the nature of the influences which dominate it.”

“I will cause others to believe in me because I will believe in them, and in myself.”

“Wisdom is knowing i am nothing, love is knowing i am everything, and between the two my life moves.”

“Our instincts are the treasure map to our soul’s satisfaction.”

“The jungle beckons but the cage comforts.”

“No one would plant a garden and not prepare the soil.”

“You can’t evolve into what you won’t explore.”

“Reading is the gymnasium of the mind, it is where thoughts are exercised and minds are stretched.”

“Learn from the mistakes of others. you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

“To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at evening with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

“A negative mind will never find success. I have never heard a positive idea come from a person in a negative state.”

“History doesn’t remember those who maintained the status quo.”

“My interest in life comes from setting huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.”

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end- which you can never afford to lose- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”

“If you are empowered enough to have the experience, then you are empowered to know for yourself what the experience means.”

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

“Failure is the soil that brings forth the plant of success.”

“You don’t take the call to action because of what you are going to get, you do it because of who you are going to become.”

“I never worry about the future, it comes soon enough.”

“Develop the courage to solve those problems that can be solved, the serenity to accept those problems that can’t be solved, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“In anyone’s life, your world always shrinks and expands in proportion to your willingness to take risk or try new things.”

“The greatest hinderance to life is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow’ and wastes today.”

“It is not that we have a short time to live,
but that we waste a lot of it.”

“We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.”

“I never lose. I either win or learn.”

“Get around people that give you energy not take energy.”

“Life is a series of mentors.”

“He or she who has the greatest capacity for discomfort rises the fastest.”

“If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be more than you are.”

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.”

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”

“Perfection is impossible. However, striving for perfection is not. Do the best you can under the conditions that exist. That is what counts.”

“How important money is to you, more than money itself, influences your happiness.”

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.”

“Potential improves as you journey towards it.”

“Let experience identify what it is you don’t know that you really should know. Then go and learn that.”

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

“You don’t even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.”

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

“Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”

“Fulfilling your purpose, and then selling something else.”

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”

“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 either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.”

“It is a principle of Heiho that to know one is to know ten thousand.”

“Practicing a thousand days is said to be discipline.
Practicing ten thousand days is said to be refining. This should be carefully studied.”

“When our behaviours match our intentions, when our actions are equal to our thoughts, when our minds and our bodies are working together, when our words and our deeds are aligned... there is an immense power behind any individual.”

“How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there’s no dream that mustn’t be dared. . . Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We’re not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished. . . Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No. . . and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction. . . fulfilled a destiny. . . To struggle and to understand - never this last without the other; such is the law. . .”

“You may not know all the specifics of your desired outcome - When it will take place, where and under what circumstances- but you trust in a future you can’t see or otherwise perceive with your senses. To you it has already occured in no space, no time and no place, from which all things material spring forth. You are in a state of knowingness; you can relax into the present and no longer live in survival.”

“The space between failures is a really a huge determining factor of your success. If you can fail fast you can win quicker.”

“Learn about yourself. Learn about the world and become stronger!”

“A man’s true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examinations, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not that which he thinks and says and does.”

“Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.”

“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

“Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.”

“All these things we do, aren’t for today but for tomorrow.”

“He may have at last found some small measure of peace, that we all seek, and few of us ever find.”

“Fortune always favours the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.”

“Like causes produce like effects.”

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

“All spiritual teachings point to the possibility of finding something in you that is deeper than thinking, a space, a stillness, that’s aways there.”

“Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.”

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

“You have to be prepared to fail, and that’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning, then you’ll really deepen into the human being you’re capable of being.”

“The tricky thing about life is, on the one hand having the courage to enter into things that aren’t familiar, but to also have the wisdom to stop exploring when you’ve found something that’s worth sticking around for (and that’s true of a place, of a person, of a vocation). In balancing those two things the courage of exploring and the commitment to staying, it’s very hard to get the ratio, the balance of those two things right. And I think my 70 year old self would think “just really be careful that you don’t err on one side or the other because you have an ill-conceived idea of who you are.”

“Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do.”

“People love to say ‘knowledge’ is power. But the truth is that knowledge is only potential power. You and I both know that it’s useless if you don’t act on it.”

“I don’t look to jump seven-foot bars: I look around for one-foot bars I can step over.”

“Every day, think as you wake up, “Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.”

“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”

“Either you master your mind or it masters you. The secret of living an extraordinary life is to take control of the mind, since this alone will determine whether you live in a suffering state or a beautiful state.”

“It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good waves’ and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad waves’ to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful!”

“A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”

“Sexuality is integral to the quality of our lives, enhancing, enriching and adding meaning to existence. It’s about openness, connectedness and growth, not about one person doing something to another. It’s a voyage of mutual discovery and pleasure.”

“Most people want everyone else in the world to change but themselves. Let me tell you, it’s easier to change yourself than everyone else.”

“You become what you study.”

“Don’t aim at success- the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—-in the long run, I say!—-success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognise that it is he who is asked.”

“Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away...”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”

“How ‘spiritual’ you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness. This in turn, determines how you act in the world and interact with others.”

“Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticise, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.”

“For things to change, you have to change. For things to get better, you have to get better.”

“Just because you’re doing a lot more, doesn’t mean you’re getting a lot more done.”

“The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.”

“You’re not responsible for the hand of cards you were dealt. You’re responsible for maxing out what you were given.”

“It’s not that bad things don’t happen to me. I don’t label a lot of things good/bad. [Instead, I ask] can I evolve from this? What do I want now? Where is my centre now?”

“Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.”

“Don’t overestimate the world and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think. And you are not alone.”

“What you react to in others is also in you.”

“Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance. The fact is: Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”

“Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skills to do difficult things easily”

“Stay humble or get humbled.”

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

“To blame someone for not understanding you fully is deeply unfair because, first of all, we don’t understand ourselves, and even if we do understand ourselves, we have such a hard time communicating ourselves to other people. Therefore, to be furious and enraged and bitter that people don’t get all of who we are is a really cruel piece of immaturity.”

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

“To know who you really are, you must step outside the world you know. Even if that means facing the one who got the better of you.”

“Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who hates it (artists); fragility is when you care more about the few who hate your work than the multitude who loves it (politicians).”

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

“You must want to be a butterfly so badly, that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

“So then I set my intention for the day: that this day should be meaningful. Meaningful means, if possible, serve and help others. If not possible, then at least not to harm others. That’s a meaningful day.”

“Laugh at yourself and don’t be so pompous and serious. If you start looking for the humour in life, you will find it. You will stop asking, Why me? and start recognising that life happens to all of us. It makes everything easier, including your ability to accept others and accept all that life will bring.”

“The acceptance of reality is the only place from which change can begin.”

“One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance.”

“When we accept the present, we can forgive and release the desire for a different past.”

“Time never waits.”

“Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you can to give it today. Every moment waited is a moment wasted, and each wasted moment degrades your clarity of purpose.”

“Whatever the specifics of a man’s purpose, he must always refresh the transcendental element of his life through regular meditation and retreat. A man should ever get lost in the details of his life and forget that, ultimately and in truth, life amounts to nothing other than what is the deepest truth of this present moment. Tasks don’t get a man anywhere more conscious or free than he is capable of being in this present moment.”

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

“You become excellent when you fly at a level that creates a wide gap between where you were before and where you are now. Fly like the eagle; the eagle flies as if it never remembered it was once an egg!”

“Don’t spend your life making excuses to yourself. You’re the one who decides how to live your life.”

“Freedom cannot be forced into existence, nor can it be won through painful struggle. Freedom cannot be bought or sold. It has nothing to do with one’s social status; one’s profession is of no consequence. In order for you to accept yourself as you are and live with your soul at peace, you must simply teach yourself to let it be, only then will you discover freedom.”

“All encounters happen but once in a life time.”

“Serve the needs of others, and all of your own needs will be fulfilled. Through selfless action, fulfilment is attained.”

“To keep on filling is not as good as stopping. Overfilled, the cupped hands drip, better to stop pouring.
Sharpen a blade too much and its edge will soon be lost. Fill your house with jade and gold and it brings insecurity. Puff yourself with honour and pride and no one can save you from a fall.
Retire when the work is done;
this is the way of heaven.”

“One who sees himself as everything is fit to be guardian of the world. One who loves himself as everyone is fit to be teacher of the world.”

“All growth comes with a shock. When a sprout breaks its casing and forces its way to the surface of the earth, it is the climax to a long and deep accumulation of life force.
We may think that it came up suddenly, but in actuality, it emerged as the product of unseen and subtle cycles.”

“Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas.”

“Be who you need to be,
to do what you need to do.”

“When you can release on your ego long enough to view your perceptions as incomplete or misleading, it gives you the freedom to imagine new and potentially more useful ways of looking at the world.”

“I find it helpful to see the world as a slot machine that doesn’t ask you to put money in. All it asks is your time, focus, and energy to pull the handle over and over. A normal slot machine that requires money will bankrupt any player in the long run. But the machine that has rare yet certain payoffs, and asks for no money up front, is a guaranteed winner if you have what it takes to keep yanking until you get lucky.
In that environment, you can fail 99 percent of the time, while knowing success is guaranteed. All you need to do is stay in the game long enough.”

“Success in spiritual life is measured not by spectacular events but by daily devotion. This iron will, this deep sincerity maintains our ascent.”

“Most of life’s greatest opportunities come out of moments of struggle; it’s up to you to make the most of these tests of creativity and character.”

“I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life’s illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.”

“What facets of your personality are encumbrances? What personal aspects prevent you from being independent? These are the areas that will define your self-cultivation, for you must strive to stand alone. This doesn’t mean that you won’t ever join with others, but you will do so as an individual who will cooperate just as much as is necessary. In this way, you will never be lost in a group, and you will never fear being alone.”

“Ask yourself, “Am I using my mental ability to make history, or am I using it merely to record history made by others?”

“Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success. We don’t become successful simply through luck. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success. Don’t count on luck for promotions, victories, the good things in life. Luck simply isn’t designed to deliver these good things. Instead, just concentrate on developing those qualities in yourself that will make you a winner.”

“This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai: if by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way.
his whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.”

“The sage knows that nothing dies, that life is mere illusion: Life is but one dream flowing into another.”

“Ultimately, all relationships are temporary. False attachment to another can become an addiction, a voluntary bondage detrimental to clear perception. We should not bind another to ourselves, should not define ourselves by our marriage, should not force another to stay with us. But if chance allows us to walk together, who is anyone to challenge our choice of walking companions?
When it is time to part, then it is time to part. There should be no regrets. The beauty of marriage is like the fleeting perfection of a snowflake.”

“How you think determines how you act.
How you act in turn determines:
How others react to you.”

“People who get things done in this world don’t wait for the spirit to move them; they move the spirit.”

“Every day passes whether you participate or not. If you are not careful, years will go by and you will only have regrets. If you cannot solve a problem all at once, at least make a stab at it. Reduce your problems into smaller, more manageable packages, and you can make measurable progress toward achievement. If you wait for everything to be perfect according to your preconceived plans, then you may well wait forever. If you go out and work with the current of life, you may find that success comes from building upon small things.”

“You may understand that life is but a dream, but that doesn’t free you from the responsibility to act. This dream may not be of your own making, but you must still engage it and operate within the parameters of the fantasy. You must become the producer, director, and actor of a phantasmic stage play. Otherwise, you are aimlessly adrift.”

“The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, elite athletes, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximised one or two strengths. Humans are imperfect creatures. You don’t “succeed” because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them…. Everyone is fighting a battle [and has fought battles] you know nothing about. The heroes in this book are no different. Everyone struggles.”

“The keys belong to whoever is inspired, and no specific age, sex, gender, or cultural background has a monopoly on inspiration. When you’re creative, you render competition obsolete, because there is only one you, and no one can do things exactly the way you do. Never worry about the competition. When you’re creative, you can, in fact, cheer others on with full knowledge that their success will undoubtedly be your own.”

“Place all your eggs in one basket and then watch the basket to see that no one kicks it over”

“Inaction leads to atrophy and this, in turn, leads to loss of ambition and self-confidence, and without these essential qualities a man will be carried through life on the wings of uncertainty, just as a dry leaf may be carried here and there on the bosom of the stray winds.”

“The human mind is constantly unfolding, like the petals of a flower, until it reaches the maximum of development. What this maximum is, where it ends, or whether it ends at all or not, are unanswerable questions, but the degree of unfoldment seems to vary according to the nature of the individual and the degree to which he keeps his mind at work. A mind that is forced or coaxed into analytical thought every day seems to keep on unfolding and developing greater powers of interpretation.”

“If you have tried and met with defeat; if you have planned and watched your plans as they were crushed before your eyes; just remember that the greatest men in all history were the products of courage, and courage you know, is born in the cradle of adversity.”

“Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—- in which case you failed by default.”

“You have within your control the power to select the material that constitutes the dominating THOUGHTS of your mind, and just as surely as you are reading these lines, those THOUGHTS which dominate your mind will bring you success or failure, according to their nature.”

“Out of resistance comes strength. The strongest oak tree of the forest is not the one
that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun, but it is the one that stands in the open, where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.”

“Knowledge is the beginning of practice; doing is the completion of knowing.”

“NOTHING CAN BRING YOU PEACE BUT YOURSELF. NOTHING CAN BRING YOU PEACE BUT THE TRIUMPH OF PRINCIPLES.”

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

“To die with one’s sword still sheathed is most regrettable.”

“Too much is the same as too little.”

“Do not engage in useless activity.”

“Do not become tense and do not let yourself go.”

“In all the martial arts, it is essential to make the everyday stance the combat stance and the combat stance the everyday stance.
You must examine this carefully.”

“In order to pass through life, there is the need to have a spirit, to be decisive about exerting all of one’s energies to overcome difficulties.”

“Make Ku your path, and your path as Ku.”

“So long as space remains,
So long as sentient beings remain,
I will remain,
In order to help, in order to serve,
In order to make my own contribution.”

“Ultimately all our difficulties arise from one basic illusion. We believe in the inherent existence of ourselves and all other phenomena. We project, and then cling to, an idea of the intrinsic nature of things, an essence that phenomena do not actually possess.”

“All things that appear in this world are transient. If you view all things that appear as never having appeared, then you will realise your true self.”

“Across time just as much as across space, the fundamentals of our nature are universally and idiosyncratically human.”

“As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning view all created things like this.”

“When your work is done, don’t involve yourself in what doesn’t concern you.”

“There are three kinds of listening. First, we listen to the words. Second, we listen to the meaning. Third, we listen to the truth. As we listen to these words about controlling the mind, we must grasp the truth and forget the words and their meaning. By turning our attention within, we can rediscover our own nature. For we all possess this perfectly still nature. But it is obstructed by ignorance and delusions that rise and fall without cease. Thus, students should concentrate on on turning their hearing within. And they should keep listening until they realise that the Buddha, all beings, and the mind are not three different things.”

“The fruit from a seed without limits turns out to be a fruit without limits: what kind of fruit could possibly have no limits?
Chao-ming titles this: The wonderful practice of no attachment.”

“Always doing what you are told doesn’t mean you’ll succeed in life.”

“Don’t be attached to a self within or to others without or to any gift that passes between. View things as you would in a mirror. When things appear, reflect them. When things disappear, let them go.”

“Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.”

“The sea is one, while waves are countless. Billions of waves rise and fall during the morning. Billions of waves rise and fall during the midday. Billions of waves rise and fall during the afternoon. Thus, over the course of millions and trillions of kalpas, the number of illusory waves is far beyond reckoning. But all those illusions can’t compare to the one reality—-they can’t compare to the sea.”

“Perfectly still, no other thought / empty silence, this is my teacher.”

“Let go your earthly tether. Enter the void. Empty, and become wind.”

“Enlightenment is the fruit that isn’t picked. Teaching is the doctrine that forgets the words.”

“When we are deluded, our teacher liberates us. When we are enlightened, we liberate ourselves.”

“The beautiful lotus grows out of the mud. Without afflictions and suffering, we cannot make a Buddha.”

“Form itself contains no suffering. It is attachment that contains suffering.”

“We use dharmas to cultivate. But once we realise the truth, the perception of a dharma is empty. This is called the true perception of a dharma.”

“Until we meet again, here is something for your empty bowl: regard all things, all beings, this teaching, this sutra, this body of merit, this realisation, regard them all as unreal.”

“The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.”

“Don’t chase with your eyes, feel with your skin.”

“In the shadow of victory dwells the spectre of greed and attachment.”

“It’s about being a warrior.
It doesn’t matter about the cause necessarily.
This is your path and you will pursue it with excellence.
You face your fear because your goal demands it,
that is the god damn warrior spirit.”

“A guy who can’t do what needs to be done today definitely can’t do it tomorrow.””

“If you fall, I’ll support you. / Omae ga taoreta ore ga sasaeru”

“No matter how small my steps, they will eventually add up. Even if I didn’t win today, the step I take now will take shape one or two months from now. That’s why I don’t give up. No matter how long it takes, even if it takes a year, I will lead Sohoku to victory.”

“If I’m an idiot here’s how I start this, if I’m smart, how do I start this?”

“A loser can try again. But a life… You can’t get that back.”

“I just kept waiting for a bullet to hit me, lights out. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to die. Zero. Zero doubt. But I was going to make this son of a bitch earn it.”

“Above confidence lies pride, and below humility lies subservience. I want you to keep your feet on solid ground and keep walking forward.”

“There’s always room at the top for the best, where it’s crowded is down with everybody else is.”

“You can’t let your emotions dictate your actions.”

“If you are facing in the right direction, all you have to do is keep walking.”

“The gems I’ve found were forged in the struggle. Never ever give up.”

“Don’t peak in high school.”

“Kids or any athlete (adults as well) will either live up to the standard you set, or they will live down to the standard you set.”

“Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.”

“Do it and you’ll understand. Never do it and you’ll never understand.”

“Never increase quantity at the expense of quality.”

“Even if I finish first, if I feel like I’ve lost to myself, then it’s a loss.”

“The place you’re going is beautiful, but it’s too lonely. Too lonely for any living human to endure.”

“Health can never be divorced from strength.”

“There are some things I value more than my life.”

“I can always be the best against ME. That’s all that mattered.”

“Ignorance has no age limit.”

“I want what all men want. I just wanted more.”

“You say you want to die for love but you know nothing about dying and you know nothing about love.”

“Your desire to remain as you are is what ultimately limits you.”

“If you can’t tell yourself, then no one can tell you.”

“What we do in life... echoes an eternity.”

“You’ll stop caring what people think about you when you realise how seldom they do.”

“You wanna come back out here, we’ll be out here working our asses off. You wanna come back out, make sure you bring a heart with you next time.”

“The immune system has a memory that’s much longer than your metabolism.”

“And when the difficult things don’t exist, we make things that aren’t difficult, difficult.”

“The road to nowhere is paved with excuses.”

“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst. And corrupts the best. I never asked for power. Power is only given to those who are prepared to lower themselves to pick it up.”

“What comes easy won’t last. What lasts won’t come easy.”

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

“Education is not merely a matter of imparting a technique which will equip the boy to get a job, but it is to help him discover what it is he loves to do. This love cannot exist if he is seeking success, fame or power; and to help the child understand this is education.
Self-knowledge is education. In education there is neither the teacher nor the taught, there is only learning; the educator is learning, as the student is. Freedom has no beginning and no ending; to understand this is education.”

“No God is needed, no heaven and hell are needed. All that is needed is a simple understanding that mind is the source of negativities.”

“I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration.”

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

“Sasuke, forget about something like revenge. Well in this business I’ve seen a stink of guys just like you. But the final days of those who speak of revenge are never good. They’re tragic. You’ll only hurt yourself and agonise more than now. Even if you succeed in revenge, all that will remain is emptiness.”

“We have been programmed by evolution not to understand the true nature of the world. we’ve been programmed by evolution to survive, and those are two radically different propositions.”

“Man is the master of his own fate not the gods. The gods are man’s creation to give answers that they are too afraid to give themselves.”

“Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’, in fact we achieve excellence by acting ‘rightly’.”

“There is no good in anything until it is finished.”

“He who thinks great thoughts, often makes great errors.”

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”

“It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.”

“A man with outward courage dares to die: a man with inner courage dares to live.”

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”

“So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”

“No one’s too big not to learn something new.”

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”

“Loving people live in a loving world.
Hostile people live in a hostile world.
Same world.”

“You can be born with bad cards, you don’t need to have it all, but you have a choice and the power to craft your own destiny, your own path.”

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

“If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a life time — help someone else.”

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

“Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.”

“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

“Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better.”

“People who are naturally better than you, have been different from you ever since they were born. It’s impossible to turn that around, no matter how hard you work, how well you strategise, or who your teammates are. You can complain about that once you’ve actually done everything you possibly can. Rather than despairing and giving up because you’re not a genius, believe that your strength is not limited to this, and continue on the path straight ahead of you.”

“They are enforcing mediocrity ... mediocrity is a very comforting thing.”

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”

“As rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, do not burden your heart with judgments but rain your kindness equally on all.”

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

“Gohan, you showed me that power is nothing without being guided by love.”

“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.”

“You can’t let mortality hold you down.”

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

“The Truth is realised in an instant; the Act is practiced step by step.”

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying ‘I will try again tomorrow.”

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

“It must be a peace without victory ... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.”

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”

“Tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that… what you need to do won’t ever change.
Reality will always be there in front of you. So instead of running from it, why not try running with reality?”

“He did get through my guard, it was temporary.”

“With realisation of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.”

“Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness.”

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”

“So that we may always have something to offer.”

“Do not put other people’s opinions on a pedestal when they are not living your life.”

“It’s each day at a time for me, I never look past one day, and you just have to be better than yesterday.”

“Being Indian is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of being in harmony with all things and all beings. It is allowing the heart to be the distributor of energy on this planet; to allow feelings and sensitivities to determine where energy goes; bringing aliveness up from the Earth and from the Sky, putting it in and giving it out from the heart.”

“Practice is this life, and realisation is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.”

“I had to throw you off that cliff. Otherwise you would never use your wings.”

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

“You think you can just escape? Walk out of this world like it’s some bad movie? It’s too easy to make like a bird. To flap your wings as you chicken out after causing all these problems. The tough part’s walking. Taking what comes along and walking right through it. That’s what real people do.”

“I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.”

“People have been asking me ‘whats your next big adventure?’ And I always say dying, because when we die there’s either nothing, which is fine, or there’s something and if theres something, what an adventure to find out.”

“The Dalai Lama had said, that the idea that brains create consciousness—-an idea accepted without question by most scientists—- “is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact.””

“Someone who can listen and understand, that if you stay in control of yourself that’s the key to everything in this world.”

“Rome was not built in a day, when you train, when you go to class, you try to build a couple of bricks, not the whole Rome. You think you’re gonna’ build the whole Rome, you’re gonna’ be in for a disappointment.”

“Kevin Hart’s story of approaching Jeff Bezos at a Super Bowl party”

“You can’t have life without the regenerative capacity of death.”

“Show your religion through your actions.”

“To do
the useful thing,

to say
the courageous thing,

to contemplate,
the beautiful thing:

that is enough
for one man’s life.”

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

“Either with your shield, or on it.”

“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

“Sometimes it’s necessary to do unnecessary things”

“To know sorrow is not terrifying. What is terrifying is to know you can’t go back to happiness you could have.”

“ONE’S DESTINATION IS NEVER A PLACE, BUT A NEW WAY OF SEEING THINGS.”

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. But when I’ve finished, if the solution is not beautiful I know it’s wrong.”

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.’”

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

“There are no regrets. If one can be proud of one’s life, one should not wish for another chance.”

“You can’t always hold on to the things that are important. By letting them go we gain something else.”

“Weaklings will stay weak forever. But weakness is not evil, since human beings are weak creatures to begin with. Alone, you feel nothing but insecurity; that’s why we form guilds, that’s why we have friends. We walk together in order to live a strong life. The clumsy ones will walk into more walls than the others, and it may also take them longer to get there. If you believe in tomorrow and put yourself out there, you can naturally obtain your strength. That’s how you will be able to smile and live strong.”

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

“There is no one who can undertake this task for you. The student’s hunger can never be satisfied by his teacher’s eating a meal for him. It is like competing in a marathon. The winner will only be the person who is either the fittest or the most determined. It is solely up to the individual to win the race. Likewise, to achieve the aim of your practice, do not be distracted by things that are not related to this task. For the time being, just let everything else remain as it is and put it out of your mind. Only when you are awakened willl you be able to truly benefit others.”

“Sometimes you must hurt in order to know, fall in order to grow, lose in order to grow because life’s greatest struggle is through the pain.”

“Fools who don’t respect the past are likely to repeat it.”

“Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.”

“You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.”

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”

“The circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant, but it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”

“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.”

“I’m never less at leisure than when at leisure, or less alone than when alone.”

“Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people eat together.”

“It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing your whole life.”

“One word frees us
Of all the weight and pain in life,
That word is Love.”

“Not going
Not coming
Rooted
Deep and still
Not reaching out
Not reaching in
Just resting
At the center
A single jewel
The flawless crystal drop
In the blaze of
its brilliance
The way beyond”

“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”

“I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”

“Even if you’re weak, there are miracles you can seize with your hands if you fight on to the very end.”

“Sex is more than an act of pleasure, it’s the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it’s almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you’re a part of them. ”

“Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this.”

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

“If you turn your eyes away from sad things, they’ll happen again one day. If you keep running away, you’ll keep repeating the same mistakes. That’s why you have to face the truth straight on.”

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men’s desires, but by the removal of desire.”

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting”

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in your mind.”

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”

“Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and then afterwards looks for victory.”

“The amateur practices until they get it right, the professional practices until they can’t get it wrong.”

“Know thyself deathless and able to know all things, all arts, sciences, the way of every life. Become higher than the highest height and lower than the lowest depth. Amass in thyself all senses of animals, fire, water, dryness and moistness. Think of thyself in all places at the same time, earth, sea, sky, not yet born, in the womb, young, old, dead, and in the after death state.”

“Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn’t sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is intense, then sex joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the principal aim.”

“I have a dream to reach, and if I die trying, at least I’ve tried.”

“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.”

“Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.”

“The art of war teaches us not to rely on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him;
not on the chance of him not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

“It’s easy to do nothing, it’s hard to forgive.”

“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won’t need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

“Through action, a man becomes a Hero.

Through death, the Hero becomes a Legend.

Through time, the Legend becomes a Myth.

And by learning from the myth, a man takes action.”

“If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches;
if their lives are not unduly long. it is not because they’re disinclined to longevity.”

“It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, then to carry it when it is full.”

“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilised as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”

“Just keep in mind:
the more we value things outside of our control,
the less control we have.”

“
It’s not about possible or impossible.
I’m doing it because I want to. I decided to become the Pirate King and if I die fighting for it,
then that’s that!”

“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep;
I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”

“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get —
only with what you are expecting to give —
which is everything.”

“To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment;
not to know and yet think we do know is a disease.”

“It’s more important to master the cards you’re holding than to complain about the ones your opponent was dealt.”

“Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.”

“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.”

“Love is necessary to satisfy the mind, ethics to satisfy the conscience, and spiritual seeking for peace of soul. Without food and clothes, the body becomes thin and weak. Without eroticism, the mind becomes restless and unsatisfied. Without virtue (ethics), the conscience goes astray. Without spirituality, the soul is degraded.”

“Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.”

“A man should say, I am not concerned that I have no place, I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known, I seek to be worthy to be known.”

“Love: Two minds without a single thought.”

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it.
— this is knowledge.”

“I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.”

“Whatever task you undertake, do it with all your heart and soul. Always be courteous, never be discouraged. Beware of him who promises something for nothing. Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. Do not look for approval except the consciousness of doing your best.”

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.”

“Man seeks peace, yet at the same time yearning for war… Those are the two realms belonging solely to man. Thinking of peace whilst spilling blood is something that only humans could do. They’re two sides of the same coin… to protect something… another must be sacrificed.”

“The only thing that exists, my friend, is a knowing that is everywhere, which is atman, which is in me and in you and in every being. And I am beginning to believe that this knowing has no greater enemy than wanting to know, than learning.”

“Tsze-Kung asked what constituted the superior man,
the master said, “he acts before he speaks and afterwards speaks according to his actions.”

“My desire is for wisdom, not for the exercise of the will. The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.”

“When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are.”

“You’re wrong, that’s not what makes a shinobi. You never did get it, a real ninja is one who endures no matter what gets thrown at him... Let me explain something to you, there is only one thing that matters if you are a shinobi, and it isn’t the number of jutsu you possess. All you do need, is the guts to never give up.”

“When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of contrary character, we should turns inwards to examine ourselves.”

“The active part of man consists of powerful instincts, some of which are gentle and continuous; others violent and short; some baser, some nobler, and all necessary.”

“Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”

“To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone else.”

“There comes a time when a man has to stand and fight! That time is when his friends’ dreams are being laughed at! And I won’t let you laugh at that!”

“The world was beautiful when one just looked at it without looking for anything, just simply, as a child.”

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

“The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It’s what you’re made of. Not the circumstances.”

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?”

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

“You can either experience the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The choice is yours.”

“Every successful person in the world is a hustler one way or another. We all hustle to get where we need to be. Only a fool would sit around and wait on another man to feed him.”

“If you believe it’ll work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you don’t believe it’ll work out, you’ll see obstacles.”

“Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.”

“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.”

“The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”

“Death is not the end;
Loss of conviction is the end.”

“We should not hoard knowledge; we should be free from our knowledge.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking”

“Fire is His head, the sun and moon His eyes, space His ears, the Vedas His speech, the wind His breath, the universe His heart. From His feet the Earth has originated. Verily, He is the inner self of all beings.”

“Taoist chanting, Confucian chanting, Christian chanting, Buddhist chanting don’t matter. Chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Coca Cola … can be just as good if you keep a clear mind. But if you don’t keep a clear mind, and are only following your thinking as you mouth the words, even the Buddha cannot help you.”

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

“The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

“Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you.”

“You should never ignore things one could still accomplish. If you want to know who and what you are, you must reexamine and acknowledge your true self.”

“The wise understand by themselves; fools follow the reports of others.”

“True victory isn’t about winning against someone strong, what it’s actually about is defending what’s most important to you.”

“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”

“Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.”

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“We’re born free, all of us.⁣⁣
Free.⁣⁣
Some don’t believe it.⁣⁣
Some try to take it away,⁣⁣
To hell with them.⁣⁣
Water like fire,⁣⁣
Mountains of ice,⁣⁣
The whole bit, lay your eyes on that, and you’ll know what freedom is, that it’s worth fighting for. Fight to live, risk it all for even a glimmer of real freedom. It doesn’t matter what’s waiting outside the gate, or what comes in.⁣⁣
It doesn’t matter how cruel the world can be or how unjust!... FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT.⁣⁣
FIGHHHHT!”

“You either get better or you get bitter. It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.”

“If you can’t let it go, it’s not worth holding on to.”

“Anything is possible if you have inner peace.”

“I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is harmful to it.”

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

“Once you label me you negate me.”

“Melting our attachment to self is the most powerful medication for bringing mental and emotional imbalances in check.”

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

“Zen has no business with ideas.”

“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.”

“Man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”

“Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.”

“My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“No matter how strong the pain is, it’s our duty to move forward. You’re wrong for running away from reality.”

“Each adversity brings with it, the seed of an equivalent advantage.”

“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”

“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.”

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

“Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.”

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

“My path has not been determined. I shall have more experiences and pass many more milestones.”

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.”

“My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.”

“You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.”

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it. ”

“The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”

“Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.”

“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”

“A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds love in what he does.”

“Sometimes I do feel like I’m a failure. Like there’s no hope for me. But even so, I’m not gonna give up. Ever!”

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”

“Technique is there to learn how to transcend it.”

“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

“Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it. ”

“Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth... That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.”

“The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else’s eyes.”

“A wise man makes his own decisions. An ignorant man follows public opinion.”

“Why would so many risk their reputations, families, careers—even presidential legacies—for something that runs against human nature? Were monogamy an ancient, evolved trait characteristic of our species, as the standard narrative insists, these ubiquitous transgressions would be infrequent and such horrible enforcement unnecessary. No creature needs to be threatened with death to act in accord with its own nature.”

“I don’t think of myself just as a Tibetan or a Buddhist, but as a human being. We have to think of the whole of humanity. Being human is the common ground in our efforts to create a better world. Remember, we all survive in dependence on others.”

“Time flows constantly, it doesn’t care about the people who are struggling.”

“Being coached hard IS NOT abuse.
Being held to high standards for your own growth and development IS NOT
abuse. loving your athletes enough to not let them settle IS NOT abuse.
Improvement and success don’t come on the back of a unicorn galloping over a rainbow.”

“I have money, it’s trust and character I need around me; who you choose to be around you, let’s you know who you are. One car in exchange for knowing what a man’s made of, that’s a price I can live with. Look at all those ppl down there, they follow the rules for what? they’re letting fear lead them (what happens if they don’t?) Life’s simple, you make choices and you don’t look back.
Han - FnF Tokyo Drift”

“It just takes time,
it just takes patience, he says,
just like it does with people. Don’t give up
until you have done everything to change
yourself. Then, he says as he sits
on the doorstep, only then you can start
blaming others.”

“When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”

“The daughters of Sparta are never at home! They mingle with the young men in wrestling matches.”

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

“A lion will never eat grass, no matter how hungry he is. Be like a lion, never lower your standards because someone expects that from you.”

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general.”

“Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be. ”

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.”

“You shouldn’t let the depth of the scar, depth of sadness, or the intensity of your despair keep you from moving forward. No matter how strong the pain is, it’s our duty to move forward. You’re wrong for running away from reality.”

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

“If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”

“Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. “We are the only women who raise men,” the Spartan lady replied.”

“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.”

“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.”

“Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places? Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own heart.”

“Deny death, and you deny life.”

“Rise up, warriors, take your stand at one another’s sides, our feet set wide and rooted like oaks in the ground. ‘‘…learn to love death’s ink-black shadow as much as you love the light of dawn. ‘Here is courage, mankind’s finest possession, here is the noblest prize that a young man can endeavour to win.”

“My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”

“The Truth is realised in an instant; the Act is practiced step by step.”

“No matter how many people you may lose, you have no choice but to go on living. No matter how devastating the blows might be.”

“We often pass from love to ambition, but we hardly ever return from ambition to love.”

“There’s no room for softness... not in Sparta. No place for weakness. Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans. Only the hard, only the strong.”

“Go ahead and live with your head held high. No matter how devastated you may be by your own weakness or uselessness, set your heart ablaze. Grit your teeth and look straight ahead.”

“Be a warrior when it comes to delivering on your ambitions. And a saint when it comes to treating people with respect, modeling generosity, and showing up with outright love.”

“I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.”

“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”

“That city is well fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick.”

“A man’s true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examinations, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not that which he thinks and says and does.”

“The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.”

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

“The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”

“A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”

“Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.”

“When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.”

“Have great hopes and dare to go all out for them. Have great dreams and dare to live them. Have tremendous expectations and believe in them.”

“Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide, but I love you until the end of time.”

“Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.”

“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible.”

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

“Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”

“When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.”

“It’s actually quite hard to do something different when everyone wants to do the same.”

“Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.”

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.”

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”

“Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

“Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption.”

“To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.”

“There is a popular fallacy that falling down is the mark of a poor skater. But the truth is that when one stops falling, he has probably stopped improving.”

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”

“Many people say that love is an option, but then why do you live? I think we live to love. And it doesn’t have to be romantic love, it can be anything, but finding love in any person or in any subject, I think thats a goal, I think that’s when people find meaning in something.”

“Success should not be relative. Success is not being better than other people. Success is not being the best. Success is maximising your potential whatever that is.”

“Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.”

“To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.”

“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.”

“This is what I understood and realised when I listened to the teaching. This is the reason I’m going to continue my wanderings - not to find another or better teaching, for I know that one does not exist, but in order to leave behind all teachings and teachers and to attain my goal on my own or die.”

“Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature.”

“The world suffers a lot.
Not because of the violence of bad people,
but because of the silence of good people.”

“I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.”

“You are not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have.”

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect—you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.”

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

“They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.
They want us to barricade our doors
and hide our children.
Their aim is to make us fear life itself!
They want us to hate.
They want us to hate ‘the other’.
They want us to practice aggression
and perfect antagonism.
Their aim is to divide us all!
They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness.
They want us to bury our love
and burn our hope.
Their aim is to take all our light!
They think their bricked walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you I bleed.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate
and we will never be silent
for life is ours!”

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”

“The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become of it.”

“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.”

“My dear,

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.

Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.

~ Falsely yours”

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”

“He gradually transformed himself from an instinctive fighter into a man who fanatically pursued the goals of Zen-like self-discipline, complete inner mastery over oneself, and a sense of oneness with surrounding nature.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

“Life imposes things on you that you can’t control, but you still have the choice of how you’re going to live through this.”

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

“The likelihood there is going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”

“A dictatorship means muzzles all round and consequently stultification. Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.”

“I cried today. I wasn’t sad. You showed me beauty that I had only seen in books and dreams. I now see it in you.”

“Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top.”

“It’s not that some have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some are ready to change and others are not.”

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.
”

“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

“Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be god’s paradise.”

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
”

“True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.”

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

“Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.”

“Between madness and normalcy, which are basically the same, there is an intermediate state: it’s called being different, and people are increasingly afraid of being different.
What disrupts is the risk of being different and the horror of being equal.”

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”

“Not only did
I love her,
but I could tell
the universe loved
her, too.
More than others.
She was different.
After all; I would
be a fool not to
notice the way the
sunshine played with
her hair.”

“Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn’t what you get for it, but what you become for it. Shake things up today! Be You...Be Free...Share.”

“Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”

“The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.”

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.”

“Time is relative to the proximity of gravitational forces, and psychologically its passing is relative to the gravity of the situation.”

“A ship should not ride on a single anchor, nor life on a single hope.”

“Even if I never make any money, even if all I do is make a few people a little bit better, I have got to focus on doing this.”

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

“When you feel burning desire for something that appears pleasureful, you are like a person under a spell. Instead of acting on impulse, take a step back—wait till the enchantment fades and you can see things as they are.”

“Dare to Be
When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully.

When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light.

When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it.

When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway.

When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back.

When there seems to be no hope, dare to find some.

When you’re feeling tired, dare to keep going.

When times are tough, dare to be tougher.

When love hurts you, dare to love again.

When someone is hurting, dare to help them heal.

When another is lost, dare to help them find the way.

When a friend falls, dare to be the first to extend a hand.

When you cross paths with another, dare to make them smile.

When you feel great, dare to help someone else feel great too.

When the day has ended, dare to feel as you’ve done your best.

Dare to be the best you can –
At all times, Dare to be!”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

“The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.T he chances, the changes are all yours to make. The mold of your life is in your hands to break.”

“Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.”

“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow. Today is the right day to Love, Believe, Do and mostly Live.”

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don’t have strength.”

“I asked a wise man, “tell me sir, in which field could I make a great career?” he said with a smile, “be a good human being. There is a lot of opportunity in this area and very little competition.”

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

“To be honest with you, I don’t have the words to make you feel better, but I do have the arms to give you a hug, ears to listen to whatever you want to talk about, and I have a heart; a heart that’s aching to see you smile again.”

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

“The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-Tzu’s dictum: “Those who know, do not say; Those who say, do not know.” When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant. Said the master, “Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?” All of them indicated that they knew. Then he said, “Put it into words.” All of them were silent.”

“For us, warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who can not provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.”

“Some of the first human beings in whom the new consciousness emerged fully became the great teachers of humanity, such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Jesus, although their teachings were greatly misunderstood, especially when they turned into organized religion. They were the first manifestations of the flowering of human consciousness.”

“This is not a political thing, this isn’t anything but a human thing.”

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

“You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.”

“I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.”

“For the Spartans, it wasn’t walls or magnificent public buildings that made a city; it was their own ideals. In essence, Sparta was a city of the head and the heart. And it existed in its purest form in the disciplined march of a hoplite phalanx on their way to war!”

“I chose to take the oath of office with my personal copy of the Bhagavad Gita because its teachings have inspired me to be a servant-leader, dedicating my life in the service of others and to my country.”

“Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.”

“I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.”

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”

“We are all citizens of one world, we are all of one blood. To hate people because they were born in another country, because they speak a different language, or because they take a different view on this subject or that, is a great folly. Desist, I implore you, for we are all equally human. . . . Let us have but one end in view: the welfare of humanity.”

“He who knows much about others may be learned, but he who understands himself is more intelligent. He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.”

“Nothing I say can explain to you Divine Love Yet all of creation cannot seem to stop talking about it.”

“Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably And never regret ANYTHING That makes you smile.”

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

“There comes a point in your life when you realize:
Who matters,
Who never did,
Who won’t anymore,
And who always will.
So, don’t worry about people from your past, there’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your future.”

“When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it. It is not the things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor are they what they seem to be. They are what they are.”

“The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one and it would not be a wasted life.”

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”

“Whatever you are physically...male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy—all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.”

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

’So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don’t lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.”

“REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS
Before you were born,
And were still too tiny for
The human eye to see,
You won the race for life
From among 250 million competitors.
And yet,
How fast you have forgotten
Your strength,
When your very existence
Is proof of your greatness.
You were born a winner,
A warrior,
One who defied the odds
By surviving the most gruesome
Battle of them all.
And now that you are a giant,
Why do you even doubt victory
Against smaller numbers,
And wider margins?
The only walls that exist,
Are those you have placed in your mind.
And whatever obstacles you conceive,
Exist only because you have forgotten
What you have already
Achieved.”

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

“When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And When his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And When he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden...


But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of
love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears...

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.”

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.”

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

“To bear and not to own; to act and not lay claim; to do the work and let it go: for just letting it go is what makes it stay.”

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

“A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.”

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”

“Just because you love someone, doesn’t mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.”

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”

“Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass.”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”

“The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that “if you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.”

“The seasons drift. Time is fluid and people change. But I have never lost faith... even if the world turned upside down I could still find you.”

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm. Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”

“You can always die. It’s living that takes real courage.”

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”

“Before the war on drugs, the war on terror, or the war on cancer, there was the war on female sexual desire. It’s a war that has been raging far longer than any other, and its victims number well into the billions by now. Like the others, it’s a war that can never be won, as the declared enemy is a force of nature. We may as well declare war on the cycles of the moon.”

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.”

“A game that you have punish people to adhere to is going to be outcompeted by a game that people will play by themselves.”

“Yuji, you’re a strong kid, so help others. Even if it’s only those closest to you, just save the people you can. It’s okay if you lose your way, and don’t worry about whether they’ll thank you or not. Just save as many people as you can, even if it’s only one. When you die, you should be surrounded by people. Don’t end up like me.”

“Cinderella walked on broken glass
Anurora let a whole lifetime pass
Belle fell in love with a hideous beast
Jasmine married a common thief
Ariel walked on land for love
Snow White barely escaped a knife because
Rapunzel has to find a new dream
Tiana kissed her prince and turned green
Mulan left to be a man
Pocahontas stayed to save her land
It’s all about the smiles and tears; because love means facing your biggest fears”

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

“Don’t exist.
Live.
Get out, explore.
Thrive.
Challenge authority. Challenge yourself.
Evolve.
Change forever.
Become who you say you always will. Keep moving. Don’t stop. Start the revolution. Become a freedom fighter. Become a superhero. Just because everyone doesn’t know your name doesn’t mean you don’t matter.

Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? What have you done today to matter? Did you exist or did you live? How did you thrive?

Become a chameleon-fit in anywhere. Be a rockstar-stand out everywhere. Do nothing, do everything. Forget everything, remember everyone. Care, don’t just pretend to. Listen to everyone. Love everyone and nothing at the same time. it’s impossible to be everything, but you can’t stop trying to do it all.

All I know is that I have no idea where I am right now. I feel like I am in training for something, making progress with every step I take. I fear standing still. It is my greatest weakness.

I talk big, but often don’t follow through. That’s my biggest problem. I don’t even know what to think right now. It’s about time I start to take a jump. Fuck starting to take. Just jump-over everything. Leap.

It’s time to be aggressive. You’ve started to speak your mind, now keep going with it, but not with the intention of sparking controversy or picking a germane fight. Get your gloves on, it’s time for rebirth. There IS no room for the nice guys in the history books.

THIS IS THE START OF A REVOLUTION. THE REVOLUTION IS YOUR LIFE. THE GOAL IS IMMORTALITY. LET’S LIVE, BABY. LET’S FEEL ALIVE AT ALL TIMES. TAKE NO PRISONERS. HOLD NO SOUL UNACCOUNTABLE, ESPECIALLY NOT YOUR OWN. IF SOMETHING DOESN’T HAPPEN, IT’S YOUR FAULT.

Make this moment your reckoning. Your head has been held under water for too long and now it is time to rise up and take your first true breath.

Do everything with exact calculation, nothing without meaning. Do not make careful your words, but make no excuses for what you say. Fuck em’ all. Set a goal for everyday and never be tired.”

“As the Island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance—the boundary between the known and unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination—whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyways—but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.”

“If because you don’t like the thing that needs to be done, you do it poorly, you increase the likelihood that you’ll have to do more of it in the future. And if you continue to do it poorly, you will create this positive feedback loop where you create more and more requirement that you do it, and the more poorly you do it, the more requirement there is for the thing.”

“Every organisation should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.”

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

“The truly brave man is one who loves life, cherishing it as a treasure that once forfeited can never be recovered. He well knew that to live was more than to survive. The problem was how to imbue his life with meaning, how to ensure that his life would cast a bright ray of light into the future, even if it became necessary to give up that life for a cause. If he succeeded in doing this, the length of his life — twenty years of seventy — made little difference. A lifetime was only an insignificant interval in the endless flow of time.”

“There’s no difference between writing and thinking. And theres no difference between thinking and not failing. So you let your thoughts die instead of you, that’s thinking. You test everything you do before you implement it, that’s thinking and writing is a massive aid to that process.”

“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.”

“She caught his sleeve again, her eyes searching his, trying to prolong this last moment, to keep it from ever ending.
Her silent appeal nearly undid him. There was beauty even in the weakness that prevented her from speaking.”

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”

“I have two basic convictions: First, more harm has been done by weak persons than by wicked persons; secondly, the problems of the world are caused by the weakness of goodness rather than by the strength of evil. It is evident that we have allowed technology to outstrip social controls.... Man must catch up with what he has created.”

“Watching him sit so stiffly, restraining his emotions, avoiding her face as though a look at her might blind him, she felt once again like a sheltered maiden experiencing the first pangs of love.”

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.”

“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.”

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.”

“He must be awfully important. That’s what I want to be when I grow up.”
”Important?”
”Umm.”
”You shouldn’t aim so low.”
”What do you mean?”
”Look at Mount Fuji.”
”I’ll never be like Mount Fuji.”
”Instead of wanting to be like this or that, make yourself into a silent, immovable giant. That’s what the mountain is. Don’t waste your time trying to impress people. If you become the sort of man people can respect, they’ll respect you, without your doing anything.”

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

“In the journey of finding love I focus on having a great relationship with myself first.”

“Your hand
touching mine.
this is how
galaxies
collide.”

“It’ll be a test of strength between a man who’s a genius, but really somewhat conceited, and an ordinary man who’s polished his talents to the utmost, won’t it?”
”I wouldn’t call Musashi ordinary.”
”But he is. That’s what’s extraordinary about him. He’s not content with relying on whatever natural gifts he may have. Knowing he’s ordinary, he’s always trying to improve himself. No one appreciates the agonising effort he’s had to make. Now that his years of training have yielded such spectacular results, everybody’s talking about his ‘god-given talent’. That’s how men who don’t try very hard comfort themselves.”

“This may be an outdated concept, but death brings human completion, don’t you think so?”

“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

“Before mobile devices, we would say “brb” (be right back) all the time when we were online. We don’t say it anymore. We never leave. We live here now. Because of our always-on, ever-connected devices, we’re struggling to find connection when we’re with friends and family, and we’re struggling to stay focussed at work.”

“Musashi resented being a public hero. In view of his exploits, it was inevitable that he would be made one, but he did not seek this. What he really wanted was more time to himself for meditation. He needed to develop harmony, to make sure his ideas did not outpace his ability to act.”

“Just be you, Tohru, and live at your own pace. You’ll catch up eventually.”

“Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; Then to that twenty, add a hundred more: A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on, To make that thousand up a million. Treble that million, and when that is done, Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.”

“A circle? What could it mean?” He let his thoughts flow.
A perfectly round line, no beginning, no end, no deviation. If expanded infinitely, it would become the universe. If contracted, it would become co-equal with the infinitesimal dot in which his soul resided. His soul was round. The universe was round. Not two. One. One entity — Himself and the universe.”

“But Tohru, I want you to believe in people. Doubting is easy. Anybody can do it.
You be the kind of girl who can believe in people, I just know... that will help someone.”

“With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.”

“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”

“Think of a young elephant tied to a stake in the ground. When it’s a baby, the elephant isn’t strong enough to pull the stake up, so it eventually stops trying because it learns the effort is futile. As the elephant grows, it gains more than enough power and strength to pull out the stake, but it remains tied up by something as inconsequential as a rope and a flimsy piece of metal because of what it learned as a baby. In psychology, it’s called learned helplessness. Most of us behave like that elephant. At some point we had an experience that gave us an impression of what we’re capable of, and our belief about our potential has been set ever since. But just as helplessness is learned, it’s just as possible to learn to be limitless.”

“The path I’m following is, for me, the way toward a fuller life.”
”You’ll be lucky if it doesn’t lead you straight to hell.”
”This river, you know, may be the the three-pronged river of hell; this road, the mile-long road to perdition; the hill I’ll soon climb, the mountain of needles which the damned are impaled. Nevertheless, this is the only path toward true life.”
”The way you talk, you may already be possessed by the god of death.”
”Think what you like. There are people who die by remaining alive and others who gain life by dying.”

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

“To him, any place could serve as home — more than that: wherever he happened to be was the universe.”

“Legoshi: Because I love you, Haru-chan, I will get stronger.
Because I want to make you happy, without getting defeated by this society or my instinct. I will get stronger.
...Haru-chan: I’ll be waiting for you.”

“You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sene of aliveness that flows into.”

“To run with the wolf was to run in the shadows, the dark ray of life, survival and instinct. A fierceness that was both proud and lonely, a tearing, a howling, a hunger and thirst. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. A strength that would die fighting, kicking, screaming, that wouldn’t stop until the last breath had been wrung from its body. The will to take one’s place in the world. To say ‘I am here.’ To say ‘I am.”

“All, everything that I understand, I only understand because I love.”

“You’re not the only one, by any means. It’s only natural, but you should avoid the temptation of thinking that your dreams can be realised only in some far-off place. If you think that way, you’ll neglect the possibilities in your immediate surroundings. Most young people do, I fear, and become dissatisfied with their lives.”

“It’s a very dangerous state. You are inclined to recklessness and kind of tune out the rest of your life and everything that’s been important to you. It’s actually not all that pleasurable. I don’t know who the hell wants to get in a situation where you can’t bear an hour without somebody’s company.”

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

“Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realise the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.”

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul; that makes us reach for more, that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. That’s what I hope to give you forever.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.’”

“Unloving, unloved. A sad being, living only on hatred and emptiness. He chose to love and die rather than hate and rule. You cannot be loved unless you love. Ash... he knows at least how to love.”

“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.”

“Leave me alone. I’m happy now. Because I know there’s at least one guy... One guy who cares for me and wants nothing in return. I can’t believe how lucky I am. It’s the happiest feeling in the world.”

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”

“When I was in my 20s, I wanted to be a millionaire, and when I was a millionaire, I wanted to be in my 20s. The idea that my future self would trade all the money he had to be poor and 20 again, made me really reanalyse how I saw living life in the moment. If I literally in the future, will value my present moment more than the achievement or thing that I’m seeking right now in the present, then something’s off.”

“The moment you realise you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind you are no longer trapped in it.”

“Katsumoto: You believe a man can change his destiny?
Cpt. Algren: I think a man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed.”

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”

“Just about all problems can be settled by saying, “Whatever, just do it.” or “Time to give up.” - You first have to stand at the starting line, before you even realise what the real problem you should be thinking about is. Not knowing what the problem is before trying it is what makes a problem hard.”

“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”

“You never have to try to destroy the masses. In the end they will always exhaust themselves, potentially destroy themselves, but, what you should focus on is preventing that they destroy you.”

“…the sad part is, that I will probably end up loving you without you for much longer than I loved you when I knew you.
Some people might find that strange.
But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.”

“If we have to die then we die with our principles and not without.”

“One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realisation of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.”

“In terms of storing your sense of self worth in absolute strangers, big mistake.”

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”

“If you realise that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”

“If I know one of your views, and from it I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, you’re not a serious thinker. You’ve just adopted somebody else’s ideology and you’ve plugged it in.”

“For the benefit of those beings who set forth on the foremost of paths, for the benefit of those beings who set forth on the best of paths.”

“When you keep a clear mind, the whole universe is you, you are the universe. So you have already attained enlightenment. Wanting enlightenment is only thinking. It is something extra, like painting legs on the picture of a snake. Already the snake is complete as it is. Already the truth is right before your eyes.”

“What do you consider important? For me, it’s times like this. We don’t even need to do anything. Just the two of us walking together. Talking about nothing important. Just being able to spend time with you. I hope I get to spend even more time like this with you!”

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

“When the mind becomes clear, it is like a mirror: red comes and the mirror is red; yellow comes and the mirror is yellow; a mountain comes and the mirror is a mountain. Your mind is the mountain, the mountain is your mind. They are not two. So it is very important not to be attached to thinking or not-thinking. You mustn’t be upset by anything that goes on in your mind. Only don’t worry and keep don’t-know mind.”

“The visitor said, “My friends think I’m crazy because I’m interested in Zen.”
Soen-Sa said, “Craziness is good. Crazy people are happy, free, they have no hindrance. But since you have many attachments, you are only a little crazy. This is not crazy enough. You must become completely crazy. Then you will understand.”
The visitor bowed. Someone came and poured out two cups of tea.”

“With all the problems and challenges that face us, it’s not surprising that some feel hopeless. But let me say: as long as God (whose very essence is love) exists, there is hope. And since God, being eternal, will always exist, there will always be hope.”

“I’m not only going to bring her because Daddy’s victorious. I am blessed right now with an opportunity to show my daughter that, look you can fall down and look how you can get back up.”

“The superior man has a dignified ease without pride. The mean man has pride without a dignified ease.”

“Researchers comparing a range of new mothers; emotionally available/unavailable; some were extra doting/coddling with their infants, they looked at the adults 35 years later: the people that were the most independent and successful and self actualised were the ones that were super loved by their mothers. The conclusion of the researchers was that ‘You can’t love children too much.’, now the case that you describe (Mama’s boys/sheltered kids) is not too much loving, but loving that comes from a very anxious place. So these Mother’s that coddle their kids when their kids don’t need coddling, they’re not doing it because the child needs it, they’re doing it because they need it. They’re doing it because they were not coddled enough, they’re anxious and they’re passing on that anxiety to the child. You don’t create those dependent kids by loving them, you create them by imposing your own agenda/anxieties on them - so those are the ‘Mama’s boys’ if you want to call them that, but the Mama’s boy is just a very anxious person who downloaded his/her parents anxieties.”

“When Dae Ju first came to Zen Master Ma-jo, the Master asked him, “What do you want from me?”
Dae Ju said, “I want you to teach me the Dharma.”
”What a fool you are!” said Ma-jo. “You have the greatest treasure in the world within you, and yet you go around asking other people for help. What good is this? I have nothing to give you.”
Dae Ju bowed and said, “Please, Master, tell me what this treasure is.”
Ma-jo said, “Where is your question coming from? This is your treasure. It is precisely what is making you ask the question at this very moment. Everything is stored in this precious treasure-house of yours. It is there at your disposal, you can use it as you wish, nothing lacking. You are the master of everything. Why, then, are you running away from yourself and seeking for things outside?”
Upon hearing these words, Dae Ju attained enlightenment.”

“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation”

“I believe that working hard to be your best self is admirable. But if you dwell on that so much that you lose yourself, things that should go well might fall apart. Many people suffering like that come to my hospital all the time. Putting on an act all the time can become tiring. And that’s why I want you to be as you are, Yor.”

“Genes load the gun, it’s our diets and lifestyles that pull the trigger.”

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.”

“Let’s get back to the core values of life that we are born with and tend to our gardens in peace. Let’s not invest ourselves in hopelessness but instead in positivity, in being present, in the conviction that we are the commanders of our fate and the captains of our soul.”

“There’s two pains of a life, there’s the pain of discipline and then there’s the pain of regret, you choose which one.”

“Sometimes to change fate you need to work with others. Better to fight with a lot of arrows than just one.”

“It may look as though the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not so - your resistance is.”

“Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes clouds come and cover it, but the moon is always behind them. Clouds go away, then the moon shines brightly. So don’t worry about clear mind: it is always there. When thinking comes, behind it is clear mind. When thinking goes, there is only clear mind. Thinking comes and goes, comes and goes. You must not be attached to the coming or the going.”

“But there is one transcending level, and this is the most excellent of all. At his level the person is aware of the endlessness of entering deeply into a certain Way and never thinks of himself as having finished. He truly knows his own insufficiencies and never in his whole life thinks that he has succeeded. He has no thoughts of pride but with self-abasement knows the Way to the end.”

“Everything bad passes in time. I’ve had a lot of bad points in my life. My life experience is; whenever things seem dark, have patience, time will ultimately cure most ails, not all of them but most of them.”

“Nothing is permanent, everything is subject to change, being is always becoming.”

“One of the dysfunctional patterns of the mind is the assumption that the Now needs to be filled with something all the time.
Of course you have to do things, but see if you can also experience the spaciousness of this moment, the inherent goodness of the this moment, regardless of what it contains.”

“Seekers who are free within become finders. It’s quite impossible to find anything meaningful when yo are caught up in the stress of daily life, which can be all-consuming. Once you are able to detach from that stress, a new reality can enter your consciousness.”

“A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit.

In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms.

We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death.”

“If you want to give up,
Don’t.

If you think the world is against you,
It’s not.

If you think that it’s not worth it,
It is.

Just keep going. Never stop.
Because you never know when paradise is around the next dark corner.”

“I believe this “crossing at a ford” occurs often in a man’s lifetime. It means setting sail even though your friends stay in harbour, knowing the route, knowing the soundness of your ship and the favour of the day.
When all the conditions are met, and there is perhaps a favourable wind, or a tailwind, then set sail. If the wind changes within a few miles of your destination, you must row across the remaining distance without sail.”

“The most important thing in this world is to learn to give out love and let it come in.”

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

“You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge”

“The cold made me instantly understand from the inside. When you feel it, you feel it. It’s like falling love, it requires no explanation.”

“The richest 1% cause more than double CO2 emissions of poorest half of humanity”

“Speed in the martial arts is not the True Way.
Concerning speed, we say that something is fast or slow depending on whether it misses the rhythm of things.”

“It’s actually fairly easy to be great, it’s very difficult to be good. There are a lot of very great people who are not very good and there are not a lot of good people, and frankly most good people, die mourned by their family and friends, and two generations later they’re forgotten but those are the people who incrementally move the ball forward in the world, sometimes much more than the people who are considered great.”

“It’s been a long journey overcoming the pain and trauma, and it all starts with finding the good in yourself.”

“Understanding emptiness and attaining emptiness are different. If you attain emptiness one time, you have attained it forever. ”

“At the end of the night when I lay my head on the pillow (and I’m about to go to sleep) there’s only one thing that’s going to stop the insomnia; the existential insomnia, and that is, Was I fully true? Did I walk and equivocate against what I considered to be any falsehoods? If yes, then I’m a charlatan, if no, then I’m going to sleep like a baby.”

“Every criticism, judgement, diagnosis and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.”

“Unless you’re looking for death, you fight for your life until you can’t fight anymore. ”

“Eventually we awaken and we transcend through the experience of suffering. Suffering eventually awakens us.”

“Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, consciouness.”

“It’s gonna take time. Nothing fucking good comes fast.”

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun.”

“If you are not thinking, you are one with your action. You are the tea that you’re drinking. You are the brush that you’re painting with. Not-thinking is before thinking. You are the whole universe; the universe is you. This is Zen mind, absolute mind. It is beyond space and time, beyond the dualities of self and other, good and bad, life and death. The truth is just like this. So when a Zen person is painting, the whole universe is present in the tip of his brush.”

“Although not everyone will resonate with my work, I will focus on the few that I can serve.”

“You need to have a level of optimism and hope, that things are worth working for, worth dreaming, worth imagining. We cannot just have fear of suffering or fear of pain stopping us from doing marvellous things.”

“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

“If it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

“Just allow yourself to meld into the perfection of the universe you live in. You don’t need another thing to be happy; it’s all being provided for you right here, right now. Be in this moment, and free yourself of striving for something more or someone else.”

“You can see what women are trying to find (in that situation) is a guy who’s got the capacity for mayhem but that’s under control, but who can integrate that into a generous, reciprocal relationship.”

“I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.”

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

“The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.”

“Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you... I could walk through my garden forever.”

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”

“Everything is super important. Until you are sick. Then you realise there was only ever one thing that was important. Your health. But nonetheless we borrow from the bank of our health, taking loans on stress and sleepless nights to pay for something that doesn’t really matter.”

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world”

“Shout out to everybody who’s pushing through fear because they know a better life is waiting for them on the other side.”

“With gratitude, optimism is sustainable.
If you can find something to be grateful for, then you find something to look forward to, then you carry on.”

“You’ve got to find friends who value you. You’ve got to. You shouldn’t be around people who don’t value you. Because then you’ll end up not valuing yourself either.”

“The strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of ‘truth’ it could endure.”