But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

I think that you can love people without it being the great love.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them out of clay.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I’m upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they deny somehow that God has a feminine face. However, if you go to the holy texts, you see there is this feminine presence.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.

I want to thank my Eritrean fans for feeling connected to me and for supporting me. I feel extremely grateful.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don’t think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

My husband is everything to me and without him it’s just not the same.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a prostitute in the night.

There is no such thing as a lovers‘ oath.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life who taught me about quiet strength and dignity.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

God looks after children, animals and idiots.

People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don’t. I feel that it’s quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.