I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

A true man hates no one.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.

Life is about conduct and how we conduct ourselves. But two wrongs never make a right.

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.

I came to America to teach my method – not to enter a research experiment.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

We do not judge the people we love.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

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

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

The human body is strange and flawed and unpredictable. The human body has many secrets, and it does not divulge them to anyone, except those who have learned to wait.

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

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

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.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Real living is living for others.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

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.

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

To hold a man down, you have to stay down with him.