"My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened."
— Michel de Montaigne
"When our beliefs are based on our own direct experience of reality and not on notions offered by others, no one can remove these beliefs from us."
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
"The only way to do great work is to love the work you do."
— Steve Jobs
"A human being is a part of the whole called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
— Albert Einstein, The Einstein Papers
"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
— Leonardo DaVinci
"People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
— Richard Grenier, Washington Times
"
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close.
Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we as humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore, you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you look deeply…with the eyes of those who are awake, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here, the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger’s father—everything is in this sheet of paper…
This paper is empty of an independent self. Empty, in this sense, means that the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos.
"— Thich Nhat Hanh
"When you’re finished changing, you’re finished."
— Benjamin Franklin
"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."
— GK Chesterton
"What is this self inside us, this silent observer,
Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us
And urge us on to futile activity
And in the end, judge us still more severely
For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?"
Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us
And urge us on to futile activity
And in the end, judge us still more severely
For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?"
— TS Eliot, The Elder Statesman
A revised version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.
"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world."
— Robert McAfee Brown
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
— Ernest Hemingway
Happy Mother’s Day, Laura.
