When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

I’m drawn to bad romances.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

It is not the body’s posture, but the heart’s attitude that counts when we pray.

A relationship can give you a gut wrenching feeling sometimes. It’s a real emotional ride.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

I really have no interest in myself.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

As a medical doctor, I have known the face of adversity. I have seen much of death and dying, suffering and sorrow. I also remember the plight of students overwhelmed by their studies and of those striving to learn a foreign language. And I recall the fatigue and frustration felt by young parents with children in need.

I am not saying I am the best manager in the world. But I’m quite good.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.