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Helen Keller (1880-1968 CE)
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."
"The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart."
"The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people."
Hsuan Hua (1918-1995 CE)
"Cultivating the Way means to cultivate true morality by not obstructing others and not being afraid of being obstructed by others. No matter who obstructs you, you should accept it. 'When adversity comes, compliantly accept it.' Anyone who is unkind or unreasonable to you is just your Good and Wise Advisor."
"Don't become attached to your blessings, because once they're exhausted, you'll have none. Take all the suffering that comes to you, because once you've endured it all, you'll suffer no more."
"Everything is a test to see what you will do.
Mistaking what's before your face, you'll have to start anew.
Truly recognize your own faults.
Don't talk about the faults of others.
Other's faults are just my own.
Being of the same substance is called great compassion.""Fear arises from worry. If you have no worries, you won't be afraid of anything. If you aren't selfish, you won't be afraid either. If you don't fight, aren't greedy, don't seek, aren't selfish, don't pursue personal advantage, and don't lie, you have nothing to fear."
"If one has attachment, then one still has afflictions and ignorance. If one doesn't have any attachments, then one is without afflictions and ignorance. If there are no attachments at all, then there is no place from which afflictions come forth and there is no ignorance."
"If you have no obstacles in your own mind, then outer obstacles will not hinder you or cause you worry."
"In every moment we should be cultivating the Dharma gateway of 'being able to endure that which is difficult to endure and being able to practice that which is difficult to practice.'"
"No matter how flourishing the world becomes, when it reaches the height of its glory, it will become dark again. All things in the world, great and small, are pretty much the same; they all go through cycles."
"Praise and blame are a kind of worldly wind... [The eight winds] are praise, blame, suffering, bliss, gain, loss, slander, and good reputation. If it happens that when one is blown by the eight winds one's mind is shaken, then that's a case of your foundation not having been well laid."
"The sea of suffering is boundless;
Yet a turn of the head is the other shore.
Don't keep drifting in this sea
Or else you will never escape.""There are no doors to the hells; you yourself make the doors."
"True happiness comes when you seek nothing. When you seek nothing, you have no worries."
"When you are no longer greedy, you will be able to let go. When you can let go, you will be at peace. When you are at peace, you will realize great wisdom and enlightenment."
Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-1968 CE)
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
"If a man has not found something worth dying for, he is not fit to live."
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900 CE)
"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."
"Hear no evil, speak no evil - and you'll never be invited to a party."
"I can resist anything except temptation."
"The only thing worse than people talking about you is people not talking about you."
Quentin Crisp (1908–1999 CE)
"Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are."
"If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style."
"If love means anything at all it means extending your hand to the unlovable."
"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."
"Persistence is your greatest weapon. It is in the nature of barriers that they fall. Do not seek to become like your opponents. You have the burden and the great joy of being outsiders. Every day you live as a kind of triumph. This you should cling onto. You should make no effort to try and join society. Stay right where you are. Give your name and serial number and wait for society to form itself around you. Because it will most certainly will. Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where this is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside that you want but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked."
"Style, in the broadest sense of all, is consciousness. More specifically it is a consistent idiom arising spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained."
"Style is not the man; it is something better. It is a dizzy, dazzling structure that he erects about himself using as building materials selected elements from his own character."
"The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another."
"Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster."
"They ["straight-acting" gay men] operate on the principle that in order to find their great dark man they must first look like him. Since clones are exclusively attracted to other clones, it is impossible to rope one in without first becoming one. But which of these is the original, the archetype? And how many of them are merely pretenders, clone admirers in disguise?"
"What would you be like if there was nobody else in the world? Who would you be if the only opinion that mattered was yours? Because if you want to be truly happy, you must be that person. You must search inside yourself for what is uniquely you. When you find it, polish it until it becomes your style. It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style."
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926- CE)
"If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body."
"Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form."
"We have the habit of always looking outside ourselves, thinking we can get wisdom and compassion from another person or the Buddha or his teachings (Dharma) or our community (Sangha). But you are the Buddha, you are the Dharma, you are the Sangha."
Thomas More (1478–1535 CE), Utopia
"...for if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then puish them?" ―Danielle de Barbarac, Ever After, 1998
"...if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure some received vice according to your wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the commonwealth, for the same reasons as you should not forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You are not obiliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their road when you see that their received notions must prevent your making an impression upon them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you are not able to make them go well, they may be as little ill as possible; for, except all men were good, everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not at present hope to see."
"They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616 CE)
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." ―As You Like It
"This above all -- to thine own self be true." ―Hamlet
Others
A
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." ―Lao Tzu (604-531 BCE)
"A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!" ―Zen Proverb as told by Paul Reps, Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, 1998
"Adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around to resume living our life... Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted to yet." ―Aimee Mullins (1976- CE)
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." ―Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001
"Asking who's the 'man' and who's the 'woman' in a same-sex relationship is like asking which chopstick is the fork." ―Ellen DeGeneres (1958- CE)
B
"Blogging is not writing. It's just graffiti with punctuation." ―Dr Ian Sussman, Contagion, 2011
"But I'd rather my flame burn bright! Than be some puny little pilot light. " ―Emmett Honeycutt, Queer As Folk, 2000
"But the history of the world shows the vast majority, in every generation, passively accept the conditions into which they are born, while those who demand larger liberties are ever a small, ostracized minority, whose claims are ridiculed and ignored." ―Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902 CE)
"But who is more ignorant: the man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its natural awesome power?" ―Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, Angels & Demons, 2009
"By facing your haters, you educate yourself about what people are saying. You take what you can learn from it, and fuck the rest of it." ―Billy Brasfield (Billy B) (1963- CE)
D
"Do not become annoyed when faced with difficulties. To do so merely adds difficulty to difficulty and further disturbs your mind. By maintaining a mind of peace and nonopposition, difficulties will naturally fall away." ―Sheng-yen, tricycle
"Do not try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
[Neo: What truth?]
There is no spoon.
[Neo: There is no spoon?]
Then you will see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself." ―Boy, The Matrix, 1999"Don't be drag, just be a queen
Whether you're broke or evergreen
You're black, white, beige, chola descent
You're Lebanese, you're orient
Whether life's disabilities
Left you outcast, bullied or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
'Cause baby, you were born this way
No matter gay, straight or bi
Lesbian, transgendered life
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born to survive
No matter black, white or beige
Chola or orient made
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born to be brave
I'm beautiful in my way
'Cause God makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way
Don't hide yourself in regret,
Just love yourself and you're set
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way, yeah
Ooh, there ain't no other way, baby, I was born this way
Baby, I was born this way
Ooh, there ain't no other way, baby, I was born this way
I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way"
―Lady GaGa (1986- CE), Born this way
"Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters." ―Pema Chodron, tricycle
F
"First do no harm. / Primum non nocere." ―Hippocrates of Cos (c460–370 BCE)
"For the dharma to become firsthand knowledge—to feel the 'ouch' of it—you have to live intimately with it, hold it up to scrutiny, and let it hold you up to scrutiny. In the end, the ball is always thrown back to you: 'Be a lamp unto yourself,' says the Buddha. In other words, you must ultimately find the way on your own, by putting your ideas of the truth to the test. Your questions light the way." ―Larry Rosenberg, tricycle
"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again." ―Benjamin Button, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008
I
"I don't claim that God doesn't exist. God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God." ―Stephen Hawking (1942 - CE)
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
―Robert Frost (1874-1963 CE), The Road Not Taken"I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief." ―Gerry Spence (1929- CE)
"If one does not realize the nature of non-sickness, the suffering of sickness is inconceivable." ―Milarepa (c1052-1135 CE)
"If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world." ―Henry Way Kendall (1926–1999 CE)
"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha." ―Línjì Yìxuán (?-866 CE)
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then they came for me
And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
―Martin Niemoller (1892-1984 CE)"Inhale Einstein, exhale Hitler!" ―The Acoustinauts (1987 CE)
"Instead of thinking of this and that, one thing after the other, let your mind recognize itself in a single moment. When the mind recognizes itself, there is no thing to see there. It’s just wide open. That’s because the essence of mind is empty. It’s wide open and free." ―Tsoknyi Rinpoche, tricycle
"It's not dying that you need to be afraid of, it's never having lived in the first place." ―Britt Reid, The Green Hornet, 2011
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." ―Tyler Durden, Fight Club, 1999
L
"Letting go of fixation is effectively a process of learning to be free, because every time we let go of something, we become free of it. Whatever we fixate upon limits us because fixation makes us dependent upon something other than ourselves. Each time we let go of something, we experience another level of freedom." ―Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, tricycle
M
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." ―Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 CE)
"My momma always said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'"Forest Gump, Forest Gump, 1994
O
"One day can make your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is, is four or five big days that change everything." ―Beverly D'Onofrio, Riding in Cars with Boys, 2001
"One yin and one yang are called the Way.
An excessive inclination to either yin or yang is called sickness.'
When there is day, there is night;
When there is goodness, there is evil;
When there is rebelliousness, there is filiality;
When there is heaven, there is earth.
These are normal phenomena.
This is the principle of the relativity of the myriad things."
―The Book of Change, Dharma Bliss"Only a life lived for others is worth living." ―Albert Einstein (1879-1955 CE)
"Other religions suggest there may be a miracle, or you may go to heaven. But it is strangely comforting to hear from Buddha's teaching that there is no such thing. This is what it is. This is reality. The Buddha's teaching says that hope is just the flip side of fear, and fear the flip side of hope. The best thing is just to stay awake and watch it, watch yourself, and feel everything as it is right now." ―Kaz Suzuki, tricycle
"Our difficulties are not obstacles to the path; they are the path itself." ―Ezra Bayda, tricycle
R
"Remember if you can't love yourself then how in the HELL are you gonna love somebody else!" ―RuPaul, (1960- CE)
"Remember that you don’t have to like or admire someone to feel compassion for that person. All you have to do is wish for that person to be happy." ―Thanissaro Bhikkhu, tricycle
S
"Scientia potentia est - Knowledge is power" ― Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 CE), De Homine
"Self-improvement is masturbation." ―Tyler Durden, Fight Club, 1999
"Somebody can imprison your body, but not your mind." ―Zin Mar Aung, The Daily Beast, 2012
"Stop trying to control everything and just let go." ―Tyler Durden, Fight Club, 1999
T
"That which is threatening to the ego is liberating for the heart." ―Amaro Bhikkhu, tricycle
"The meditation orientation is not about fixing pain or making it better. It's about looking deeply into the nature of pain—making use of it in certain ways that might allow us to grow. In that growing, things will change, and we have the potential to make choices that will move us toward greater wisdom and compassion, including self-compassion, and thus toward freedom from suffering." ―Jon Kabat-Zinn, tricycle
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." ―Franklin D Roosevelt (1933-1945 CE)
"The pen is mightier than the sword." ― Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873 CE), Richelieu (The Conspiracy)
"The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success" ―Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952 CE)
"The things you own end up owning you." ―Tyler Durden, Fight Club, 1999
"The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts" ―T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962
"There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." ―Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999
"This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength. And knows compassion." ―Dr Abraham Erskine, Captain America: The First Avenger, 2011
"Thoughts come and go. Feelings come and go. Allow yourself to experience the transient nature of thoughts and feelings, welcoming everything that arises as Just this, not me, not mine." ―Sandra Weinberg, tricycle
"Trust no one and expect sabotage." ―Peter Argenta, MD (1968- CE)
V
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." ―Japanese Proverb as told by Richard Alan Krieger, Civilization's Quotations, 2002
W
"We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it." ―Charles Darwin (1809-1882 CE), The Descent of Man
"We must proceed with a clear-eyed awareness of the social, political, and economic context in which we live and practice. Once we awaken to where we are, we must take the responsibility to transform that world into a matrix of opportunity for wisdom and compassion, not just for ourselves but for all others." ―David Patt, tricycle
"Well-behaved women seldom make history." ―Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1938- CE)
"What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. / Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." ―Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 –1900 CE)
"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can hear, what you can smell, taste and feel then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." ―Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999
"Whatever your difficulties -- a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness -- you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do -- despite your circumstances -- are to be present and to be willing to love." ―Jack Kornfield, Guided Meditations for Difficult Times: A Lamp in the Darkness, 2010
"Whatsoever is originated will be dissolved again. All worry about the self is vain; the self is like a mirage, and all the tribulations that touch it will pass away. They will vanish like a nightmare when the sleeper awakes. He who has Awakened is freed from fear; he has become a Buddha; he knows the vanity of all his cares, his ambitions, and also of his pains." ―Walpola Rahula (1907-1997 CE)
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." ―Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951 CE)
"When we face the limitations of our power and control, all we can skillfully do is bow to that moment. The conceit of self is challenged and eroded not only by the circumstances of our lives but also by our willingness to meet those circumstances with grace rather than with fear." ―Christina Feldman, tricycle
"When you plant seeds in the garden, you don’t dig them up every day to see if they have sprouted yet. You simply water them and clear away the weeds; you know that the seeds will grow in time. Similarly, just do your daily practice and cultivate a kind heart. Abandon impatience and instead be content creating the causes for goodness; the results will come when they’re ready." ―Thubten Chodron, tricycle
"Why do people say 'grow some balls'? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding!" ―Betty White (1922- CE)
"Why fit in when you were born to stand out?" ―Dr Seuss (Theodor euss Geisel) (1904-1991)
Y
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else, and we are all apart of the same compost heap." ―Tyler Durden, Fight Club, 1999
"You deal with your shit in Zen by sitting with it. By breathing right into it. You don’t try and ignore it with pleasant thoughts or lofty ideas, and you don’t try and bury it with solutions. You deal with it, you work with it, one breath at a time." ―Steve Krieger, tricycle
"You don’t have to be afraid of pain. If it’s going to be there, you can let it be there—but don’t let the mind be in pain with it." ―Upasika Kee Nanayon, tricycle
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." ―Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight, 2008
"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." ―Tyler Durden, Fight Club, 1999
Copyright ©2008-2013 James Pate, MD