You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‚If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?‘ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‚If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?‘

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviours.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt. And, of course, there are Christian monks and nuns who already use Buddhist methods in order to develop their devotion, compassion, and ability to forgive.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

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.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There’s a thing in psychology where they think if it’s popular, it can’t be serious.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows – pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music… That would be so much cheaper than bombs.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Jesus is a divine guest inside of you all the time – one who loves, understands, sees and hears you. He wants to live in oneness with you… to be the centerpiece of everything you do.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

I get nervous for everything – literally everything.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

My wife and I don’t compete. We know each other’s preferences, and we work to provide those for each other. One will take over when the other is faced with something he or she dislikes. That’s what friends do.

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

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.