Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

No, I’m not anguished and tormented.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I’d have killed myself.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

I don’t carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

Going to a therapist is not something you do when you’re growing up as a street kid in Toronto.

I got my own back.

When I feel I’m doing too much, I do less if I can.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

I want to be relaxed in my personal life. I really don’t like to be hassled.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Touring is hard on the body.

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.

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.

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.

It’s very inexpensive to give a compliment.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

There’s certainly a side of me that isn’t completely… sane. Or completely ‚even‘ all the time. We all have our dark sides.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

You can’t take care of charity unless you take care of yourself first.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

How should a man be capable of grooming his own horse, or of furbishing his own spear and helmet, if he allows himself to become unaccustomed to tending even his own person, which is his most treasured belonging?

Just on a practical side, if you wake up early in the morning – like at 4:30 in the morning – you’re going to have some free time to yourself to make things happen, to take care of things that are important to you.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

I am a simple Buddhist monk – no more, no less.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

I have inhaled, exhaled everything.

I’m addicted to exercising and I have to do something every day.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

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

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well being of the people.

I didn’t get depressed, I don’t get depressed.

Number of people have said to me, after hearing your thinking, their mind becomes much more happier.

The moment someone asks you to do something you don’t have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.

I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.