Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing.

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting for the elevator – instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Life is wasted on the living.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I don’t keep people around me that aren’t family. You don’t get to stay. Unless you’re eating at the table with us, you’re not part. We eat together, we cry together, we live together, we die together. Everything that we do is for each other, and we care for another.

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that’s because I’m doing it wrong.

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

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.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

A useless life is an early death.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

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.

Sometimes I lose my temper.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

Nature does nothing in vain.

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

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‚What’s in it for me?‘

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available – more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

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

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

After 2014, we will support a unified Afghanistan as it takes responsibility for its own future.