A daily portion is really all we need. We do not need tomorrow’s supply, for that day has not yet dawned, and its needs are still unborn.

If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

God can cause opportunity to find you. He has unexpected blessings where you suddenly meet the right person, or suddenly your health improves, or suddenly you’re able to pay off your house. That’s God shifting things in your favor.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.

I feel you’re in charge of your own situation.

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‚Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.‘

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

I’m a human being. I’ve got opinions, I’m not always right, I’m not always on time, I don’t always say things in the proper way, but my intentions are always extremely pure.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

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

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

Vanity is but the surface.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

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

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

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.

I know that I came into the world with what I call ‚big dharma‘ – with a blueprint to teach self-reliance and a positive loving approach to large numbers of people all over the globe. I am ever so grateful for the circumstances of my life that allowed me to be pretty much left alone and to develop as I was so intended in this incarnation.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

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.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.