He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

Find joy and solace in the simple, and cultivate your utopia by feeling the Tao in every cubic inch of space.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.

No person is important enough to make me angry.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

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

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

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.

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.

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

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

No man is hurt but by himself.

I’m one of the luckiest people on earth.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

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

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.

For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

I give thanks to God and to all the people in the U.K. who have supported me over the years.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

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

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

I did not, thank the Lord, have to have a hysterectomy.

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.