Wise Words
“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. ~ Marcel Proust
Adversity
Gratitude
Grief and Loss
Happiness
Healing
Hope
Individuality
Renewal
Unity
Adversity
“Difficulties are opportunities to better things; they are stepping stones to greater experience. Perhaps someday you will be thankful for some temporary failure in a particular direction. When one door closes, another always opens.” ~ Brian Adams
“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. We seek out problems because we need their gifts.” ~ Richard Bach
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” ~ Joseph Campbell
“We’d never know how high we are ’till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the sky.” ~ Emily Dickinson
“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.” ~ Isak Dinesen
“Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.” ~ Noela Evans
“What is to give light must endure burning.” ~ Viktor Frankl
“Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.” ~ Billy Graham
“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.” ~ Arthur Golden
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” ~ Napoleon Hill’
“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” ~ Joshua J. Marine
“Looking back we see with great clarity, and what once appeared as difficulties now reveal themselves as blessings.” ~ Dan Millman
“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.” ~ Peter Marshall
“The tests of life aren’t meant to break you but to make you.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon
“One cannot get through life without pain. What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.” ~ Bernie. S. Siegel, M.D.
“Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away hunger.” ~ St. Basil
“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
“Obstacles come to instruct, not obstruct.” ~ Brian Tracy
“The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.” ~ Unknown
“Do not fear the winds of adversity. Remember: a kite rises against the wind rather than with it.” ~ Unknown
“We grow through adversity. We need not seek it out; we can all look back at moments when our lives were in utter chaos, desolation and despair. Growth comes when we respond to adversity by stretching just an edge beyond our talent and experience.” ~ Dr. Robert D. Wald
Gratitude
“There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy.” ~ Ralph H. Blum
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” ~ Melody Beattie
“If the only prayer you say in your whole life is thank you, that would suffice.” ~ Meister Eckhart
“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.” ~ Johannes A. Gaertner
“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” ~ Lionel Hampton
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” ~ J.F. Kennedy
“If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.” ~ Rabbi Harold Kushner
“Gratitude is the memory of the heart.” ~ Massieu
“Gratitude is the intention to count-your-blessings every day, every minute, while avoiding, whenever possible, the belief that you need or deserve different circumstances.” ~ Timothy Miller
“Appreciation is the highest form of prayer, for it acknowledges the presence of good wherever you shine the light of your thankful thoughts.” ~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” ~ William Arthur Ward
Grief & Loss
“Mourning is not forgetting… It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust.”
“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.” ~ Mitch Albom
“Mourning is not forgetting… It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust.” ~ Margery Allingham
“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight!” ~ Marcus Aurelius
“Everyone at some point will suffer a loss – the loss of loved ones, good health, a job. It’s your desert experience – a time of feeling barren of options, even hope. The important thing is not to allow yourself to be stranded in the desert.” ~ Patrick Del Zoppo
“Grief is a journey, often perilous and without clear direction, that must be taken. The experience of grieving cannot be ordered or categorized, hurried or controlled, pushed aside or ignored indefinitely. It is inevitable as breathing, as change, as love. It may be postponed, but it will not be denied.” ~ Molly Fumia
“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and in truth you shall see that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
“Sorrow comes to all… Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better… and yet… you are sure to be happy again.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
“When our spirit tells us it is time to weep, we should weep. It is part of the ritual, if you will, of putting sadness in perspective and gaining control of the situation. . . . Grief has a purpose. Grieving does not mean you are weak It is the first step toward regaining balance and strength. Grieving is part of the tempering process.” ~ Joseph M. Marshall III
“To find a safe journey through grief to growth does not mean one should forget the past. It means that on the journey we will need safe pathways so that remembrance, which may be painful, is possible.” ~ Donna O’Toole
“Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don’t grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot’s wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt. Grieving is not about forgetting. Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
“Three things are fundamental to an understanding of mourning. First, each loss launches us on an inescapable course through grief. Second, each loss revives all past losses. Third, each loss, if fully mourned, can be a vehicle for growth and regeneration.” ~ Vamik D. Volkan, MD
Happiness
“The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher “To live happily is an inward power of the soul.” ~ Aristotle
“What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on what happens inside a person. I am grateful for every day… and that makes me happy.” ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Earth laughs in flowers.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight on you.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Happiness is not the acquisition of anything; it’s the understanding of something.” ~ Vernon Howard
“It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.” ~ Helen Keller
“You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something.” ~ Harold S. Kushner
“Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” ~ Og Mandino
“Real happiness is so simple that most people do not recognize it. They think it comes from doing something on a big scale, from a big fortune, or from some great achievement, when, in fact, it is derived from the simplest, the quietest, the most unpretentious things in the world.” ~ Orison S. Marden
“Realize that if you want joy in your soul, you will have to choose to bring it there.” ~ Joseph J. Mazzella
“Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind.” ~ Alice Meynell
“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.” ~ Iris Murdoc
“To be happy is easy enough if we forgive ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving. No self-centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting.” ~ Joseph Fort Newton
“The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. First of all, happiness must be shared. Selfishness is its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one’s self. It is quiet, seldom found for long in crowds, most easily won in moments of solitude and reflection. It comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience.” ~ William Ogden
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” ~ James Oppenheim
“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” ~ Agnes Repplier
“The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and taking responsibility for what we find there: all of it.” ~ Richard Rohr
“Happiness is not in our circumstance but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.” ~ John B. Sheerin
“Happiness is a warm puppy.” ~ Charles Schulz
“It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.” ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.” ~ Mother Teresa
“A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.” ~ Unknown
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” ~ Denis Waitley
Healing
“To embrace one’s brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one’s healing.”
The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he’s got an abscess on his knee or in his soul. ~Rona Barrett
“Seek healing, a refilling of energy and spirit, as soon as you see that you need it. You don’t have to push yourself to give, do, or perform when what your body, mind, soul and emotions need is to heal.” ~ Melody Beattie
“To embrace one’s brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one’s healing.” ~ Robert Benson
“When an emotional injury takes place, the body begins a process as natural as the healing of a physical wound. Let the process happen. Trust that nature will do the healing. Know that the pain will pass, and, when it passes, you will be stronger, happier, more sensitive and aware.” ~ Mel Colgrove
“The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.” ~ Hubert Humphrey
“Eventually in the process of your self-healing, you will find your own strength. Through the careful hand-holding of your own spirit, through recognizing, honoring, and expressing your feelings, by nurturing your body as the vessel that holds your spirit in the web of life, you will discover that you have, without your consciously knowing it, developed the inner sturdiness from which you can function on your own behalf. This interior growth is a miracle of intimate compassion, a seedling of loving yourself that will bloom, in time, into the capacity for truly loving others.” ~ Daphne Rose Kingma
“Healing… is an active and internal process that includes investigating one’s attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one’s full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one’s external circumstances in an effort to recreate one’s life in a way that serves activation of will – the will to see and accept truths about one’s life and how one has used one’s energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health.” ~ Caroline Myss
“The human being is a surprisingly resilient organism. We impel toward health, not sickness. Your spirit, as surely as your body, will try to heal. The question you must ask yourself is not if you will heal, but how. Grief and pain have their own duration, and when they begin to pass, you must take care to guide the shape of the new being you are to become. So you should not fear tragedy and suffering. Like love, they make you more a part of the human family. From them can come your greatest creativity. They are the fire that burns you pure.” ~ Kent Nerburn
“When you move toward that which is most fulfilling and life-enhancing, healing follows regardless of what your health is like in that moment.” ~ Christiane Northrup
“When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” ~ Henri Nouwen
“Healing may not be so much about getting better as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” ~ Mary Anne Radmacher
“Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” ~ Ruth E. Renkel
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” ~ Richard Rohr
“The question you need to ask yourself is not if you will heal, but how you will heal.” ~ O. Carl Simonton
“After a stormy period of mixed feelings of prolonged sadness there comes a calm. After we become convinced that we are at the very brink of eternal despair, or fear, or guilt, or sadness, we are given a reprieve. We have a breathing space that eventually leads to whole days that have personal value and offer us the opportunity for affection. Then we recognize that no period of misery is endless and unrelenting; it is instead, changeable.” ~ Carol Staudacher
“If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into a kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us. By the work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can illuminate so much for us, offering us insight and understanding into ourselves and society.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“Recognizing and honouring our feelings is the way we recognize and honour ourselves and the spirit of life within us. But what does it mean to honour our feelings? To honour our feelings is to give such regard to them that we are able to act consciously and creatively in accordance with them to care for and protect ourselves and the spirit of life at our centre.” ~ Unknown
“Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.” ~ Von Goethe
Hope
“Hope is a waking dream.” ~ Aristotle “Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret discipline. It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved away in immediate sense experience, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaires and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.” ~ Ruben Alvez
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” ~ Emily Dickinson
“What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” ~ George Eliot
“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.” ~ Robert Engersoll
“Our difficulties launch us into new states of consciousness where we are inspired to step out of the reality of our smallest thoughts and step into the limitless freedom of our biggest dreams.” ~ Debbie Ford
“While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates… For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists.” ~ Mohandas K.Gandhi
“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.” ~ Vaclav Havel
“Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” ~ George Iles
“Hope is the foundation for creativity, inspiration, joy and all those emotions which allow us to transcend ourselves.” ~ Verena Kast
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of suffering.” ~ Helen Keller
“Each time someone stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” ~ Robert F. Kennedy
“Imagine hidden in a simpler exterior a secret receptacle wherein the most precious treasure is deposited — there is a spring which has to be pressed, but the spring is hidden, and the pressure must have a certain strength, so that an accidental pressure would not be sufficient. So likewise is the hope of eternity hidden in man’s inmost parts, and affliction is the pressure. When it presses the hidden spring, and strongly enough, then the contents appear in all their glory.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.” ~ Annie Lamott
“There are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly.” ~ Windred Newman
“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end, may also be the beginning.” ~ Ivy Baker Priest
“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” ~ Theodore Roethke
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure” ~ Rumi
“What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul.” ~ Schiller
“From the ashes of your past come the bright stars of your future.” ~ Melvin Lewis Thomas
“Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.” ~ Unknown
“Patience is the art of hoping. ~ Vauvenargus
“Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.” ~ Sarah van Breathnach
“More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels – what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds – all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world – just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope.” ~ Jim Wallis
“Hope never abandons you; you abandon it.” ~ George Weinberg
“The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.” ~ Bern Williams
“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.” ~ Lu Xun
Individuality
“Feet on ground “Who we are never changes. Who we think we are does.” ~ Mary Almanac
heart in hand
facing forward
be yourself.” ~ Jan Arden
“Going home means getting comfortable being who you are and who your soul really wants to be. There is no strain with that. The strain and tension come when we’re not being who our soul wants to be and we’re someplace where our soul doesn’t feel at home.” ~ Melody Beattie
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” ~ Henri Bergson
“The easiest thing in the world to be is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.” ~ Leo Buscaglia
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” ~ Joseph Campbell
“Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do.” ~ William Channing
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” ~ Tao Te Ching
“Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship… It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are.” ~ Joan Chittister
“to be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” ~ e.e. cummings
“Who you really are, your True Nature, is no more tied to the kind of person you’ve been than the wind is tied to the skies through which it moves. Your past is just that, the past, a place within your psyche with no more reality to it than a picture of a castle on a postcard is made from stone. You have a destination far beyond where you find yourself standing today.” ~ Guy Finley
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frigthened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” ~ Arthur Gordon
“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples’ models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.” ~ Shakti Gawain
“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it.” ~ Martha Graham
“… our concern must be to live while we’re alive — to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.” ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” ~ Audre Lorde
“At the center of your being you have the answer. You know who you are and you know what you want.” ~ Lao-tzu
“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” ~ John Mason
“Find your true path. It’s so easy to become someone we don’t want to be, without even realizing it’s happening. We are created by the choices we make every day. And if we take action in order to please some authority figure, we’ll suddenly wake up down the road and say, ‘This isn’t me. I never wanted to be this person.'” ~ Bernie Siegel, MD
“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Each being is sacred – meaning that each has an inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being.” ~ Starhawk
“Search your heart and see, the way to do is to be.” ~ Lao Tse
“Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. Celebrate it everyday.” ~ Unknown
Renewal
“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.” ~ Stephen Covey
“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” ~ Carl Bard
“Everything can be taken away 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.” ~ Viktor Frankl
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the ‘atomic age’ – as in being able to remake ourselves.” ~ Gandhi
“Even in the bleakest times there are gifts to be discovered.” ~ Jann Mitchell
“Always have faith in yourself. It is not easy to live life sometimes and face the world with a smile when you’re crying inside. It takes a lot of courage to reach down inside yourself. Hold on to that strength that’s still there and know that tomorrow is a new day with new possibilities. If you can just hold on long enough to see this through, you’ll come out a new person – stronger, with more understanding and with a new pride in yourself from knowing you made it.” ~ Kathy Obara
“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.” ~ Nido Qubein
“Until we stop ourselves or, more often, have been stopped, we hope to put certain of life’s events “behind us” and get on with our living. After we stop we see that certain of life’s issues will be with us for as long as we live. We will pass through them again and again, each time with a new story, each time with a greater understanding, until they become indistinguishable from our blessings and our wisdom. It’s the way life teaches us to live.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” ~ Seneca
“It’s never too late – in fiction or in life – to revise.” ~ Nancy Thayer
“Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers – perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.” ~ Pierre Elliott Trudeau
“Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.” ~ Dale E. Turner
“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.” ~ John Hoyer Updike
Unity
“People are not separated. They are individuated.” ~ Barbara Ann Brennan “The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.” ~ Baha’ullah
“A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father, but it can be known only as love.” ~ Joan Borysenko
“Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.” ~ Zen Master Dogen
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.” ~ John Donne
“We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of compassion so we feel connected to all people and all situations.” ~ Albert Einstein
“The only real hope of people today… is a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in Earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self- trans-cendence. Transcendence as a hand reached out close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe; transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.” ~ Vaclav Havel
“Suppose you stand on a high place to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling sea below. You need do nothing to create that beauty; you need only BE IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE IT IS, and let nature do the rest. So it is with the inner life. There is nothing we can DO to gain psychic beauty. It already exists without our effort. We need only be where we belong, that is, in self-union. Then, beauty IS.” ~ Vernon Howard
“To love is to know that you live in union with all other creatures in a world that is itself alive and constantly becoming; in short, to live is to know that you exist in a world whose highest harmony is love.” ~ Daphne Rose Kingma
“At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, a complex of wave forms and resonances which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe.” ~ George Leonard
“You can’t tell when this will happen. Usually we act as if we are autonomous, independent beings. But occasionally – at a waterfall, on a walk, hugging someone we love – we glimpse a trace of infinity. Something inside us remembers the oneness. ~ Daniel C. Matt
“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are there. ~ Yasutani Roshi
“The clear bead at the centre changes everything
There are no edges to my loving now
I’ve heard it said there’s a window that opens from one mind to another
But if there’s no wall, there’s no need for fitting the window, or the latch. ~ Rumi
“Each small task of everyday is part of the total harmony of the universe.” ~ St. Theresa of Lisieux
“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.” ~ Chief Seattle
“If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa