Forever is composed of nows.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

The lie is a condition of life.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Every day is a gift from God. Learn to focus on the Giver and enjoy the gift!

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Sometimes I lose my temper.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

I am a simple Buddhist monk – no more, no less.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

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.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.