Previous shown quotations are listed below the latest one (in alphabetical order by author).
Albert Einstein
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Douglas Adams
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Isaac Azimov (1920 - 1992)
(With reference to a correspondent)
The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.
... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Richard Bach
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,
the master calls a butterfly.
Argue for your limitations
and sure enough they're yours.
Bernard Baruch
Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong with his facts.
Henry Ward Beecher
If men had wings and bore black feathers
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
Alexander Graham Bell
When one door closes another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.
Annie Besant
O hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,
O hidden Light, shining in every creature,
O hidden Love, embracing all in oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with thee,
Know they are therefore one with every other.
William Blake
What is now proved was once only imagined.
Robert Browning
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
Rosalyn L. Bruyere (Healer & author)
It has taken thousands of years, but within this century both scientists and spiritual seekers alike have once again begun to view the laws of nature and the laws of God as reflections of the same truth.
Eileen Caddy
Gratitude helps you to grow and expand;
gratitude brings joy and laughter into your lives
and into the lives of all those around you.
George Burns
Fall in love with what you're going to do for a living. It's very important. To be able to get out of bed and do what you love for the rest of the day is beyond words. It's just great. It'll keep you around for a long time.
Winston Churchill
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Albert Clarke
In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.
Confucius (551 - 479 BC)
If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Thomas Edison
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame and in the cause and prevention of disease.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The distinction between past, present, and the future is only an illusion, however persistent.
Time is not at all what it seems.
It does not flow in only one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, 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 us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
A problem cannot be solved on the same level that it was created.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have 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.
Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
To laugh often and love much, to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded.
Emmanuel (as channeled by Pat Rodegast)
Guilt is second judgement. It is looking at oneself and saying, "I really ought not to have done that." But, my very dears, if you really "ought not to have", you would not have.
Know that at the moment of happening, it was all appropriate. if you have learned since that the act was not what you would choose now and you feel guilty, know that the act itself has brought you to this understanding. That was all it was meant to do.
And truth can live beyond its age... beyond its time and space.
Limitless possibility exists in exactly every moment of creation.
Wherever the voice of Love calls you, follow it.
However Truth knocks upon your door, open to it.
"Eternity in an hour" and 'spirit' on the Internet.
These two concepts are not so far apart.
Fear has told you that you will not have enough time to complete whatever you have come to do.
Fear is wrong.
No physical body dies one moment before the soul is ready, nor one moment after.
Don't allow your belief to be suppressed by the intellect's demand for proof...Don't wait for proof. Believe - and then allow the truth to manifest.
You are an Angel
as well as a struggling human,
but you are not
a struggling Angel.
Is truth so particular
that there is only one gate to heaven?
There are no gates.
Heaven is inside you.
You are not even the gatekeeper.
Robert Frost (poet)
Two roads diverge in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favour.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Christopher Frye
Thank God, our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took.
Buckminster Fuller
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
Kahlil Gibran
I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Goethe
Knowing is not enough, we must apply.
Willing is not enough, we must do.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
J.B.S. Haldane
The Universe may be not only queerer than we think, but queerer than we can think.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Herman Hesse
It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.
The History of Medicine (unknown author)
"Doctor, I have an earache."
2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 A.D. - "That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion."
1940 A. D. - "That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill."
1985 A. D. - "That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic."
2000 A. D. - "That antibiotic doesn't work anymore. Here, eat this root."
Interview with God (unknown author)
With my newly acquired title as a journalist, I decided to strike a high note.
"Come in," God said to me, "so, you would like to interview Me?"
"If you have the time," I said.
He smiled through His beard and said: "My time is called eternity and is enough to do everything; what questions do you have in mind to ask me?"
"None that are new to you. What's the one thing that surprises you most about mankind?"
He answered: "That they get bored of being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again.
That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health.
That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future.
That they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived..."
His hands took mine and we were silent. After a long period, I said, "May I ask you another question?"
He replied with a smile.
"As a Father, what would you ask your children to do for the new year?"
"To learn that they cannot make anyone love them. What they can do is to let themselves be loved.
To learn that it takes years to build trust, and a few seconds to destroy it.
To learn that what is most valuable is not what they have in their lives, but who they have in their lives.
To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others. There will be others better or worse than they are.
To learn that a rich person is not one who has the most, but is one who needs the least.
To learn that they should control their attitudes, otherwise their attitudes will control them.
To learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in persons we love, and that it takes many years to heal them.
To learn to forgive by practising forgiveness.
To learn that there are persons that love them dearly, but simply do not know how to show their feelings.
To learn that money can buy everything but happiness.
To learn that while at times they may be entitled to be upset, that does not give them the right to upset those around them.
To learn that great dreams do not require great wings, but a landing gear to achieve.
To learn that true friends are scarce, he/she who has found one has found a true treasure.
To learn that it is not always enough that they be forgiven by others, but that they forgive themselves.
To learn that they are masters of what they keep to themselves and slaves of what they say.
To learn that they shall reap what they plant; if they plant gossip they will harvest intrigues, if they plant love they will harvest happiness.
To learn that true happiness is not to achieve their goals but to learn to be satisfied with what they already achieved.
To learn that happiness is a decision. They decide to be happy with what they are and have, or die from envy and jealousy of what they lack.
To learn that two people can look at the same thing and see something totally different.
To learn that those who are honest with themselves without considering the consequences go far in life.
To learn that even though they may think they have nothing to give, when a friend cries with them, they find the strength to appease the pain.
To learn that by trying to hold on to love ones, they very quickly push them away; and by letting go of those they love, they will be side by side forever.
To learn that even though the word "love" has many different meanings, it loses value when it is overstated.
To learn that they can never do something extraordinary for Me to love them; I simply do.
To learn that the shortest distance they could be from Me is the distance of a prayer."
Carl Jung
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart...
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakens.
Helen Keller
Security is mostly 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. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968)
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
Cowardice asks the question: is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular---but one must take it because it is right. One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws---an unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
People are like stained-glass windows,
they sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in,
their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds
wake in the day to find that all was vanity,
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,
for they may act their dream with open eyes and make it possible.
C.W. Leadbeater
It is one of the commonest mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
Stephen Levine (author)
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?
And why are you waiting?
C. S. Lewis (1898 -1963)
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
J. Williard Marriott
Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind the stronger the trees.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has.
The Invitation (by Oriah Mountain Dreamer - copyrighted)
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Marie Osmond (singer and actor)
If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it,
you might as well laugh about it now.
Paracelsus
Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.
Peace Pilgrim (in reply to the question "Why are you a vegetarian, and how can you be sure you are consistent?)
As to my vegetarism, I do the best I can. I have never refrained from doing something I believed was right because I could not do it perfectly. I do not believe it is right for me to ask someone else to do my "dirty work" for me. I would not kill a creature, and I would not ask someone else to kill it for me, so I will not eat the flesh of the creature.
Plato (427 -347 BC)
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Edgar Allen Poe
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Frances Rodman
Just think how happy you would be if you lost everything you have right now, and then got it back again.
Rumi
Who says the eternal being does not exist?
Who says the sun has gone out?
Someone who climbs up on the roof and closes his eyes tight and says,
I don't see anything.
Albert Schweitzer
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight...The truly wise person is color-blind.
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
Seth (delivering to our conscious minds our deepest unconscious knowledge about ourselves, the world, the universe, and the source of Being Itself - delivered through Jane Roberts)
"The breast cancer suggestions associated with self-examinations have caused more cancers than any treatments have cured. They involve intense meditation of the body, and adverse imagery that itself affects the bodily cells. Public health announcements about high blood pressure themselves raise the blood pressure of millions of television viewers."
"Your current ideas of preventative medicine, therefore, generate the very kind of fear that causes disease. They are undermine the individual's sense of bodily security and increase stress, while offering the body a specific, detailed disease plan. But most of all, they operate to increase the individual sense of alienation from the body, and to promote a sense of powerless and duality." Chapter 2 "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events" by Jane Roberts
"Left alone, the body can defend itself against any disease, but it cannot defend itself appropriately against an exaggerated general fear of disease on the individual's part. It must mirror your own feelings and assessments. Usually, now, your entire medical systems literally generate as much disease as is cured -- for you are everywhere hounded by the symptoms of various diseases, and filled with the fear of disease, overwhelmed by what seems to be the body's propensity toward illness -- and nowhere is the body's vitality or natural defense system stressed." Chapter 1 "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events" by Jane Roberts
You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Quite literally you see what you want to see; and you see your own thoughts and emotional attitudes materialized in physical form. If changes are to occur, they must be mental and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your environment. Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self.
Learning to some extent is passed on through the genes, biochemically, but this is a physical materialization of inner knowledge achieved and retained from past lives... The human being does not... erupt into existence at birth and laboriously then begin its first attempt to gain experience. If this were the case, you would still be back in the Stone Age.
If desire for health leads instead to an emphasis upon symptoms to be overcome, you would be better off to avoid all thoughts of health or illness and concentrate in other directions, such as work. Such an emphasis can lead to a focus upon obstacles that stand in the way, and this reinforces the negative condition.
True self-knowledge is indispensable for health or vitality. The recognition of the truth about the self simply means you must first discover what you think about yourself, subconsciously. If it is a good image, build upon it. If it is a poor one, recognize it as only the opinion you have held of yourself and not as an absolute state.
George Bernard Shaw
We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?
You see things and say "Why?"
But I dream things that never were and say "Why Not?"
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
To Remember Me by Robert N. Test
The day will come when my body will lie upon a white sheet neatly tucked under four corners of a mattress located in a hospital busily occupied with the living and the dying. At a certain moment, a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped.
When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don't call this my deathbed. Let it be called the Bed of Life, and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.
Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman. Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.
Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play. Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist. Take my bones, every muscle, every fibre and nerve in my body and find a way to make a disabled child walk.
Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that, someday, a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her window.
Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow. If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all prejudice against my fellow man.
If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.
Max Theon
Let no one deceive you. Your capacities, aspirations and conceptions prove that you are not formed for time, but for eternity.
Poem from the book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Autobiography in Five Chapters
1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in... it's a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
5) I walk down another street.
Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal,
and then leap in the darkness to our success.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away.
Mark Twain
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbour.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Lau Tze
A thousand mile journey begins with one step.
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
Be as the still mountain
Move like the great river
Chang Tzu
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
Alan Watts
We do not "come into" this world,
we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.
Walt Whitman
Re-examine all you have been told...
Dismiss what insults your soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 - 1919)
(from her poem "Kinship")
And I am my brother's keeper,
And I will fight his fight,
And speak the word for beast and bird,
Till the world shall set things right.
Woodrow Wilson
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
Unknown poet
When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
a Zen saying
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection,
The water has no mind to receive their image.
Author Unknown
An old Grandfather, whose grandson came to him with anger at a schoolmate who had done him an injustice, said, "Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times."
He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way."
"But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather solemnly said, "The one I feed."
The Trouble Tree (author unknown)
The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start.
While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet the family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands.
After opening the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His face was wreathed in smiles, and he hugged his two small children and then gave his wife a kiss.
Afterward, he walked me to my car. We passed the tree, and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier.
"Oh, that's my trouble tree," he replied. "I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing for sure, troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning, I pick them up again."
"Funny thing is," he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick them up, there aren't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before."
Return to Index Page