Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alan Watts

Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.

Alan Watts

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

Alan Watts

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then , my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Alan Watts

Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.

Alan Ball

I'm a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, 'Everything changes, don't take it personally.'

Alan Ball

I believe forgiveness is possible for everybody, for everything, but I'm a Buddhist.

Chogyam Trungpa

Anything that is created must sooner or later die. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.

Chogyam Trungpa

What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle and open to others.

Chogyam Trungpa

The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of habits and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.

Carlos Castaneda

Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated.

Carlos Castaneda

We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.

Carlos Castaneda

Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.

Carlos Castaneda

A warrior doesn't know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one's acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.

Carlos Castaneda

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

Carlos Castaneda

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

C. S. Lewis

The search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.

C. S. Lewis

I wish I were younger. What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding [evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders.

Brian Elliott

We want to prove that we're not the team that we just showed. I hope that's with everybody on our team. If we use that attitude the rest of the season, I think we'll have success.

Thomas Merton

We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.

Charles Dickens

Be guided, only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am certain!

Charles Dickens

And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?

Richard G. Scott

Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more. He therefore gives you experiences that stimulate growth, understanding, and compassion which polish you for your everylasting benefit.

Dave Davies

We obviously need more love in the world. And we obviously need more compassion and understanding. Our leaders need to really address these issues properly now.

David R. Brower

We may learn anew what compassion and beauty are, and pause to listen to the Earth's music.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love.

Jane Austen

Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.

Jane Yolen

In fantasy stories we learn to understand the differences of others, we learn compassion for those things we cannot fathom, we learn the importance of keeping our sense of wonder. The strange worlds that exist in the pages of fantastic literature teach us a tolerance of other people and places and engender an openness toward new experience. Fantasy puts the world into perspective in a way that 'realistic' literature rarely does. It is not so much an escape from the here-and-now as an expansion of each reader's horizons.