Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

My life is my message.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

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

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

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.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

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.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

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

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory… And why not? Victory is good for you, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we’re really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don’t have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

Don’t be a spectator, don’t let life pass you by.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

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

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

The willingness and ability to live fully in the now eludes many people. While eating your appetizer, don’t be concerned with dessert.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

My mind doesn’t work, my memories don’t work like a computer file where I can just retrieve them and, boy, there it is. My mind is selective in terms of memories. When I try to think back to college or high school, there are gaps. I try to fill them in. But I can’t tell you it’s always the truth.