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.

To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

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

Life is precious.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

You do indeed have a past, but not now! And, yes, you have a future, but not now! You can consume your now with thoughts of ‚then‘ and ‚maybe,‘ but that will keep you from the inner peace you could experience.

Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

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

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

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

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

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

I think the self-burning itself on practice of non-violence. These people, you see, they easily use bomb explosive, more casualty people. But they didn’t do that. Only sacrifice their own life. So this also is part of practice of non-violence.

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

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.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

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

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

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.

Freedom is a right ultimately defended by the sacrifice of America’s servicemen and women.

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

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.

Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it… Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

We go on in our pleasures thinking they’re going to last forever.

Remind yourself that the greatest technique for bringing peace into your life is to always choose being kind when you have a choice between being right or being kind.

I’m not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I’ve always liked the Buddhist religion. When I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.