Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

I really concentrate on what’s on my plate at the moment and do the very best I can.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

During the second half of the twentieth century, I had the privilege of living through years of intensive erudition, and I realized that Canadians, located in the northernmost region of this hemisphere, were always respectful towards our country.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Children make your life important.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

The fewer the words, the better the prayer.

There is something in the way that we are now, with our cell phones, and people are not looking at each other and not being in the moment with each other, that kids feel isolated.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

The only length of life that seems to satisfy the longings of the human heart is life everlasting.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

The willingness and ability to live fully in the now eludes many people. While eating your appetizer, don’t be concerned with dessert.

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

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.

Life is our dictionary.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Let go of yesterday.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.