I’m a quote-a-holic. I believe in the power of words to reshape thoughts, thereby changing our feelings and perceptions. Here are some of my favorites.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls the butterfly.
Richard Bach
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
Shakespeare, Henry V
To be in harmony with the oneness of life is to be without anxiety about imperfection.
Zen Master Dzogen
I made a list of things I have to remember and a list of things I want to forget, but I see they are the same list.
From Linda Pastan’s poem Lists
The attitude of surrender is the best antidote to one’s own anger, anxiety, and fear.
Sally Kempton in Yoga Journal article
All of our emotions are our babies. Treat them tenderly, care for them. Be with them. Understanding and compassion will ultimately transform them.
Thich Nhat Hanh in Walking Meditation
There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
Louis L’Amour
Suffering is not the nature of our experience. It comes from misunderstanding our experience.
Ethan Nichtern in One City
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Tacitus
The Buddha’s Five Remembrances:
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
All stress comes from resisting the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth
The most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself.
Nicole S. Urdang
When Krista Tippett asked eighty year old Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche Communities, what he was doing these days he replied: I’m doing what I’ve been doing for the past 40 years: learning to love reality.
Comparison is misery.
The Buddha
If I only had three words of advice I could give you they would be : Tell the Truth.
If I were allowed three more, they would be: All the time.
From Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
Everyone, and everything, is our teacher.
Yogic aphorism
One is one’s own refuge. Who else could be the refuge?
The Buddha
Nemo dat quod non habet. (Latin for: You cannot give what you do not have.)
We give what we desperately want. We say what we need to hear.
Robyn Posin
You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
C.S. Lewis
Forgiving before you are ready is an act of violence against yourself. And, you may never be ready.
Nicole S. Urdang
Never give the devil a ride, because if he likes the ride pretty soon he’ll want to drive.
Anne Lamott
The sun is always behind the clouds.
Truism
I love you, I will never leave you, I will always take care of you. (Said to oneself.)
Elizabeth Gilbert
What would it be like if I could accept life, accept this moment, exactly as it is?
Tara Brach
The best way way out is always through.
Robert Frost
One of the secrets to a happy life is continuous small treats.
Iris Murdoch
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday and all is well.
Dale Carnegie (with add-on by NSU)
I go out for a walk every day because the demons don’t like fresh air.
Ingmar Bergman
The choice is pain or paralysis.
Florence Nightingale
That which you seek is already within you.
Yogic aphorism
Expectations are resentments under construction.
Anne Lamott
There is no other person in the whole world more deserving of compassion than you.
The Budddha
It’s your life. If you’re not going to be enthusiastic about it who will be?
Nicole S. Urdang
One heals suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
Marcel Proust
Sometimes, you just have to let everything fall apart.
Pema Chodron
When you find yourself reacting to someone’s behavior, imagine that person as a seven year old. If you see their hurt and pain it’s easier to have compassion and move on.
Gurmukh
Be here now.
Ram Dass
Believing in life before death is hard enough.
“Shoe” in the comic strip Crow
Revenge is like drinking rat poison and expecting the rat to die.
Anne Lamott
When the horse is dead it’s time to dismount.
Attributed to Dakota Indians
We have all experienced abandonment. What we need to learn is to never abandon our own self.
John Selby
Forgiveness means that it’s finally unimportant that you hit back–you’re done. It doesn’t necessarily mean you want to have lunch with the person.
Anne Lamott
Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what is going on.
Pema Chodron
What we practice we become.
Yogic Aphorism
When we let go our hand opens and we are able to receive.
Rolf Gates
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
Kimberly Johnson
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Dr. Seuss
Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts.
Pema Chodron
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.
C.G. Jung
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Paul Dickson
My beloved child, break your heart no longer. Each time your judge yourself you break your heart.
Bapuji
Rest is a sacred act.
Robyn Posin
A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth.
Marion Woodman
Now that my ladders gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart
W.B. Yeats
We can’t heal what we can’t feel.
Debbie Ford
barn’s burnt down;
now I can see
the moon
Haiku by Masahide
Tenderly, I now touch all
things,
knowing one day we will
part.
St. John of the Cross
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
William Shakespeare
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way….
Charles Dickens
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Neibuhr
Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.
Ian Matthews
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart
A Spiritual Journey
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
Wendell Berry
If you don’t risk anything you risk even more.
Erica Jong
Referring to meditation, an old Chinese Zen Master once said, “Some of you are taking me literally when I say, ‘Don’t think,’ and you are making your minds like a rock. This is a cause of insentiency and an obstruction to the Way. When I say not to think, I mean that if you have a thought, think nothing of it.”
The heart, like the grape, is prone to delivering its harvest in the same moment it is crushed.
Roger Housden
Transcending boundaries is one of the joys of life.
Cedar Barstow
The Heart Sutra: Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha
“Gone, gone, gone to the other shore beyond.”
Buddha
You can’t escape from a prison unless you know you are in it.
Anonymous
When life descends into the pit
I must become my own candle
Willingly burning my self
To light up the darkness around me.
Alice Walker
Sadness is information from the soul.
C.G. Jung
Courage is the ability to create a relationship with the unknown.
David Whyte
Be happy for no reason.
Alan Finger
The thread is spun under the tears, the cloth bleached with tears, the shirt sewn with tears; but then too it is a better protection than iron and steel….The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself….Then, there is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow.
Kierkegaard comparing the final stage of human consciousness to the shirt in an old fable.
Confidence comes from doing difficult things.
Anonymous
Man is what he makes of himself. And the courage to be as oneself is the courage to make of oneself what one wants to be.
Paul Tillich
In some ways the trauma of separation is a welcome contrast to the boredom that underlies many marriages.
Abigail Trafford
The hardest experiences of our lives crack us open to that which connects us all.
Maria Coffey
To attain clarity, allow confusion.
The Tao of Healing, Haven Trevino
If you can’t get out of it get into it.
Saying from Outward Bound
Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that. That’s all, that’s all! If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once, that minute…. It’s all good. I discovered it all of a sudden.
Dostoyevsky, The Possessed
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with all the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
Eleanor Roosevelt
We are all one, contributing our part to the wholeness of the universe. Each like a petal: unique, though an integral part of creating the flower’s beauty. Complete as we are, right this minute.
Nicole S. Urdang
When two people decide to get a divorce it isn’t a sign they don’t understand one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.
Helen Rowland
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Socrates
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Dalai Lama
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Ghandi
Buddhist Prayer For Peace
May all being everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses.
May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free.
May the powerless find power and may people think of befriending one another.
May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wilderness—the children, the aged, the unprotected—be guarded by beneficial celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
If you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right.
Henry Ford
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bach
An emotional wound requires the same priority attention as a physical wound. Set time aside for mourning.
Melba Colgrove, Harold H. Bloomfield, & Peter Williams
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
Naomi Shabib Nye
