There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

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.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

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

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

I feel you’re in charge of your own situation.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

Because in a split second, it’s gone.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

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.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

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

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.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

There’s no substitute for the practice of meditation.

I’m the most stubborn person I know.