Here is a collection of some notable quotations that I thought were meaningful.
The self that we are now contains the actualization potential which will fulfill us.
(Leo Buscaglia: Personhood)
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
(Herman Hess: Demian)
Down the many roads among the stars must man propel himself in search of the final secret? The journey is difficult, immense, at times impossible, yet that will not deter some of us from attempting it….We have joined the caravan, you might say, at a certain point; we will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know. (Loren Easily The Immense Journey)
But where shall I start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I know best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my street, No my family, never mind, I shall start with myself.
(Elie Diesel Souls on Fire)
The manifestation of every person and the world in which we live is the minimum requirement of our existence, its major purpose and its only hope.
(L. Buscaglia: Personhood)
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s long for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for theirs dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
(Kahn Gibran: The Prophet)
Childhood is a time for play, for experimentation. Everything is curious. Few of us have been able to escape the fascination (and frustration) of watching a child explore. No place is too perilous, no object too valuable, no obstacle too insurmountable. They braille their way fearlessly over the world seeing, listening, responding. The mystery the child is searching for is itself.
(L. Buscaglia: Presented
The adult with a capacity for true maturity is one who has grown out of childhood without losing childhood’s best traits. He has retained the basic emotional strengths of infancy, the stubborn autonomy of tottered the capacity for wonder and pleasure and playfulness of the preschool years, the capacity for affiliation and the intellectual curiosity of the school years. The idealism and passion of adolescence. He has incorporated these into a new pattern of development dominated by adult stability, wisdom, knowledge, sensitivity to other epode responsibility, strength, and purposiveness.
(Joseph Stone and Joseph Church: Childhood and Adolescence)
Maturity is not a goal, but rather a process.
(L. Buscaglia: Presented
The Buddhas and the Christ’s are born complete. They neither seek love nor give love, because they are love itself. But we who are born again and again must discover the meaning of love, must learn to live as love, must love as the flower lives beauty.
(Henry Miller: Insomnia)
True intimacy is a positive force only if it is a combining of strengths and energies with other mature persons for the continued growth of each.
(L. Buscaglia: Personhood)
The afternoon of life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.
(Carl Jung)
Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rage at close of day.
(Dylan Thomas)
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
(Oscar Wilde)
If life’s meaning is to be discovered, it is intrinsic in each stage as we assume the challenge of actualizing every moment of every day as we live it.
(L. Buscaglia: Personhood)
Man has come to control all other forms of life because he has taken more time in which to grow up; when he takes still more time, and spends this time more wisely, he may learn to control and remake himself.
(Will Durant: The study of Philosophy)
The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
(Eleanor Roosevelt)
If name be needed, wonder names them both; from wonder into wonder existence opens.
(Lao Tzu: The way of the life – biennia translation)
As to the way – the intelligent man goes beyond it, the imbecile does not go far enough.
(Confucius: from the chang youg, 4)
Confucius said: When a man carries out the principals of conscientiousness and reciprocity he is not far from the universal law. What you do not wish others should do unto you, do not unto them.
(From the golden mean of tsesze XIII)
A wicked man who reproaches a virtuous on Eli like one who looks up and spits at heaven; the spittle soils not the heaven but comes back and defiles his own person.
(Buddha: The sutra of forty two sections)
There are two extremes, O brethren which a holy man should avoid the habitual practice of…. Self-indulgence, which is vulgar and profitless….and the practice of self-mortification, which is painfully and equally profitless.
(Buddha: The sermon at Benares)
The religious life, Malunkyapulta, does not depend on the dogma that the world is eternal; not does the religious life, malunkyapulta, depend on the dogma that the world is not eternal. No matter what the dogma….There still remains birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief and despair. And it is against these here on earth that I am prescribing.
(Buddha: The Majjhima Nikaya)
Know the self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect the charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the enjoyer.
(The Upanishads, V)
Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself…True happiness is born of self reliance…
(The Laws Of Man)
Knowledge is the holiest of holies, the God of God’s, and commands the respect of crowned heads: shown of it a man is but an animal. The features and furniture of one’s house may be stolen by thieves, but knowledge the highest treasure, is above all stealing.
(The Pureness II)
There is no fault in those who believe and do deeds of righteousness – God Loves the good Doers.
(The Koran)
Thou sets the evildoers going in fear of what they have earned, that is about to fall on them; but those who believe and do righteous deeds are in meadows of the gardens.
(The Koran)
I do not ask of you a wage for this, except love for the kinfolk; and whosoever gains a good deed, we shall give him increase of good in respect of it.
(The Koran)
More flesh, more worms;
More wealth, more worry;
More women, more witchcraft;
More concubines, more lechery;
More slave, More thievery.
But, More law, more life;
More study, more wisdom;
More counsel, more enlightenment,;
More Righteousness, More peace.
(The Talmud from Mishna)
Four classes of men will never see God’s face: The scoffer, the liar, the slanderer, and the hypocrite.
(The Tallied sata h, 24a)
Choose life, that you my live, you and your descendants
(Deuteronomy 30:19)
Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for wherein thou judgest, thou condiments thyself; for you that judges doeth the same things.
(The Epistle of Paul Romans 2:1-2)
But I say unto you which hear, love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smitten thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. Give every man that asketh of thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as yea would that men should do to you, do yea also to them likewise.
(Luke 6:27-31)
Know yea not that yea are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelt in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall god destroy: for, the temple of God is holy, which temple yea are.
I Corinthians 3:16,17)
We do not exist for ourselves (as the center of the universe), and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others. What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean, first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give others.
(Thomas Merton)
He who isn’t busy being born is busy dying!
(Bob Dylan)
Perhaps the fact of life most conductive to living fully as a person is an honest awareness and acceptance of death.
(L. Buscaglia: Personhood)
When we can embrace death as simply another aspect of the life cycle, we sill give appreciation and value to each life encounter knowing that it will never occur again.
(L Buscaglia: Personhood)
Love not what you are but only what you may become.
(Cervantes)
No man is an island of itself. Each is a piece of the continent a part of the main.
(John Donne)
He who enters the sphere of faith (the state of being ultimately concerned) enters into the sanctuary of life.
(Paul Tillich)
Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary everything is sacred.
(Teilhard De Chardin)
When we cling to pain, we end up punishing ourselves.
(Leo Buscaglia: Personhood)
“Each day is a gift to you. Make it blossom and grow into a thing of beauty”
“The Miracle is this…the more we share, the more we have.”
-Leonard Nimoy-
“A person who aims at nothing has a target he can’t miss.”
“Better than being the head of the family is being the heart of it.”
“Behind the idea that one calls one’s own are the thoughts and efforts of many.”
“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
-Oscar Wilde-
“When you’re through changing, you’re through.”
“The first essential of doing a job well is the wish to see the job done at all.”
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt-
“Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.”
“It is good to let a little sunshine out as well as in.”
“Time Flies; but remember, you are the navigator.”
“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”
-Ralphs Hodgkin
“We see through others only when we see through ourselves.”
-Eric Hoffer-
“Advise would be more acceptable if it didn’t always conflict with our plans.”
“You can’t expect an empty bag to stand up straight.”
“The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.”
“Those who are ashamed of the past and afraid of the future don’t find the present so hot either.”
“We are like trees; we must create new leaves new directions, in order to grow.”
“Don’t be content with being average. Average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top.”
“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.”
-Richard L. Evans-
“Nothing will happen if we all wait for others to do it first.”
“The heart must have its time of snow…to rest in silence, and then to grow.”
“When day is done you frequently discover that little else is.”
“Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once.”
“Great visions often start with small dreams.”
“Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.”
“The beginnings of all things are small.”
-Cicero-
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
-Helen Keller-
“You deep on getting what you’ve been getting when you keep on doing what you’ve been doing.”
“Friendship is like a rainbow between two hearts.”
“The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.”
-Sir William Osler-
“We need people with the artistry to live in simplicity as the hummingbird does, enjoying with nectar without bruising the flower.”
“Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.”
-Friedrich Shiller-
“A smile is a passport that will take you anywhere you want to go.”
“If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.”
“Incomplete terminations interfere with new beginnings.”
“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”
-The Bible-
“it is what we are that gets across, not what we try to teach.”
“We can’t all be shinning examples, but we can at least twinkle a little.”
“One loving spirit sets another on fire.”
-St. Augustine-
“Sometimes it is better to be open and feeling than closed and wise.”
“Nice guys may appear to finish last, but usually they are running a different race.”
“Treasure is not always a friend, but a friend is always a treasure.”
“Success consists in doing the common things of life uncommonly well.”
“Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”
“Live to make the world less difficult for each other.”
-George Eliot-
“To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.”
“If you don’t know where you are going, you may miss it when you get there.”
“The closer we are to that which surrounds us, the closer we are with ourselves.”
“So long as enthusiasm lasts, so long is youth still within us.”
“He lives in wisdom who sees himself in all and all in him”
-Bhagavad Gita-
“It is better to be alone than in bad company.”
“And this I have learned…grownups do not know the language of shadows.”
-Opal Whiteley-
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
-Khalif Gibran-
“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”
-Michel De Saint Pierre-
“Contentment consists not in treat wealth, but in few wants.”
-Epictetus-
“By the time you have figured out the right way to raise a child, he’s all grown up.”
“If you don’t enjoy what you have, how could you be happier with more?”
“Each day slowly shapes our lives, as dripping water shapes the stone.”
“Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.”
-Goethe-
“Do more than listen; Understand.”
-John H. Rhoades-
“The only thing of value we can give kids is what we are, not what we have.”
-Leo Buscaglia-
“Life is a mystery to be lived; not a problem to be solved.”
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
-William Jennings Bryan-
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
-Helen Keller-
The sayings of the Sages
Wisdom from the East
Honor thy father, and thy son will honor thee.
When a consuming desire to steal another’s goods is transformed into action, the result is endless woe.
If you keep looking for faults, at last even your relatives will leave you.
A learned man who gives good advice to others and forgets of himself is to be compared with the wick of a lamp which spends light to others, while its own self wastes away.
Three are not to be trusted: the steadiness of a horse, the favor of a king and the faith of women.
The prudent takes no poison even if he possesses the antidote.
Do not act too familiarly with the noble, for he will feel offended; nor with the vile, for he will become insolent toward thee.
A fool gives a nut to him who has to teeth. He gives advice to one who has not the means to follow it.
Not he who can extricate himself from difficulties is the prudent one, but he who cautiously bewares not to intricate himself.
It is better that thou shouldst guard thy secret than that another one should guard it.
He who proves things by experience increases his knowledge, he who believes blindly increases his error.
The following are good when joined together: Learning joined with the fear of God, memory with genius, beauty with kindness, nobility of decent with good morals, joy with security, riches with contentment and endeavor with the help of God.
A Smiling enemy is like a colocynth, it has green leaves, but its taste kills.
Men eat greedily; more greedily, however, time eats them.
Two are not to be satiated: he that seeks knowledge and he that seeks riches.
To refuse in a kind manner is better than to make promises which are not kept.
Beware of thy enemy once, of thy friends a thousand times.
Thy secret is thy prisoner if thou keepest it; thou are it prisoner if thou divulgest it.
A wound inflicted by speech is more painful than a wound inflicted by the sword.
Bad morals destroy what the ancestors have built.
Eloquence consists in making the speech comprehensible to the multitude and agreeable to the learned.
Water is the most indifferent thing as long as we have it, – the most precious as soon as we want it.
On entering every one feels embarrassed; the remedy is a friendly greeting.
Envy is like rust on iron, that leaves it not until it corrodes it.
To be inclined to anger is in the nature of boys; to mourn the past is in the nature of women.
If traveling in the land of one-eyed, put out one of thy eyes.
Mankind consists of two men; one who takes heed, the other of whom heed is taken.
Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.
When the son’s beard begins to grow shave thy own beard.
Be submissive in thy childhood that thou mayest be respected in thy old age.
If you can solve the knot with the tongue, do not solve it with the teeth.
He who excuses himself without having given offense makes himself suspected of it.
Do not trust who lies for thee, for he is as ready to lie against thee.
Who asks more of a friend than he can bestow deserves to be refused.
Every bird rejoices in its own voice.
Three make lean – a slow messenger, a lamp that does not shine, and the expectation to dine at the table of him who is yet to come.
Beware of too much laughter, for it deadens the mind and produces oblivion.
The beginning of anger is madness; the end is penitence.
A man cannot be blamed for not being of noble origin.
Old age is sickness enough.
thy right hand shall not inflict injury upon thy left hand. (Be just to thy own kind.)
Treat thy subordinate with kindness, thy equal with justice and thy superior with prudence.
Do unto thy brother as thou wouldst have him do unto thee.
A friendly smile is a key to security and a lamp to benevolence.
Instruction in the time of youth is like the sculpture on a stone.
A face without bashfulness is like a log whose bark has been peeled off, and like a lamp whose oil has been consumed.
He who fatigues his body brings peace to his mind.
Nothing that comes from heaven is more bitter than the cup of blindness.
Speech is a beautiful net in which souls are caught.
The enemy of thy father, as long as he lives, will never be thy friend.
For three things there is no remedy: Poverty associated with laziness, sickness coupled with old age, and enmity mixed with envy.
Weakness married laziness and their progeny was poverty.
None will scratch my back but my own nail, and none will hasten my business but my own foot.
The egg of today is better than the hen of tomorrow.
He who accepts the promise of security from an enemy is not free from danger.
Why is the flap of the ear soft? That one may press it into the cavity of the ear when he hears objectionable words.
The friend of a king is like one that rides on a lion: men fear him, and he fears the animal on which he rides.
He who administers to a king should enter blind and leave mute.
A little bread is better than a thousand words.
Not every one who is covered with a leopard skin is a hero.
When the hawk grows old the sparrows mock him.
Two are to be pitied: the noble in the power of the vile, and the wise in the power of the fool.
Every moment of time carries away a part of thy life.
Thy morning time is a fox, thy evening a wolf. In youth we are beguiled by time; in old age we are devoured by it.
Be not of those who publicly curse the devil, and secretly serve him.
Beauty is the wisdom of women, and wisdom is the beauty of men.
The avaricious is the guardian of his riches and the treasurer of his heir.
Knowledge is like a mountain: difficult to ascend but easy to descend.
He who buys bread with borrowed money, have compassion of him; he who buys meat with borrowed money, thrown at him a stone.
When thy neighbor shaves his beard, soap thou thine.
Not every one who searches finds, and not every one who flees escapes.
Riches and all worldly things perish; good deeds remain.
When the rich man tells a lie all say, “It is true;” and when he dances all say, “How beautiful it is!”
The fox favored by fortune conquers the lion favored by strength.
Riches are like water in the house, whose channels are obstructed; if it finds no exit it drowns the owner.
If thou hast not what thou desirest, desire what thou hast.
The greatest delight for the inhabitants of paradise is the consciousness that it will not end.
Health is better than medicine; not to sin is better than to be forgiven.
How many poor are rich in mind, and how many rich are poor in mind?
To abstain from the prohibited is better than to seek after the permitted.
The best of men is he who sees his own faults and does not see the faults of others.
The remedy for him who has no remedy is patience.
He is the wise man whose action, word, and thought are one and the same.
Riches and all worldly things perish; good deeds remain.