*I think it would be a good idea. - Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization.
*Seek not to know all the answers, but to understand the questions. - Kwai Chang Caine, from the original Kung Fu series
It is no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well. - Publilius Syrus
*We come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others. - Christopher Lasch
A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all. - Georges Bernanos
The ultimate function of civilization is to serve the unfolding of ever deeper spiritual understanding. -
*We have to learn to look at things as they are, painful and overwhelming as that may be, for no healing can begin until we are fully present to our world, until we learn to sustain the gaze. - Joanna Macy
*Que sera sera. - Doris Day
*If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating. If we are to love we must extend ourselves to adjust our communication to the capacities of our beloved. - M. Scott Peck, M.D.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them. - Galileo Galilei
*For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - Shakespeare
We must BE the change we wish to see in the world. - Gandhi
To the ego, a good relationship is one in which another person basically behaves the way we want them to and never presses our buttons, never violates our comfort zones. But if a relationship exists to support our growth, then in many ways it exists to do just those things; force us out of our limited tolerance and inability to love unconditionally. - Marianne Williamson
I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked. - ACIM
You can’t heal the body without the soul. - Socrates
*People should not try to run away from their suffering. In fact, you have to hold the suffering and look deeply into it, because that is the only way to discover the true nature of your suffering. And when you have seen the true nature of your suffering you have a chance to see the way out. - Thich Nhat Hanh
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, 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 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 important things in life aren’t the ones that happen outside us, they’re the ones that happen inside us. Outside events and circumstances exist to serve as mechanisms for producing inner experiences. - me
Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you who you are. - Houssaye
Today I do affirm that I am Divinely guided...There is That within which knows what to do and how to do it, and It compels me to act on what It knows. -Ernest Holmes
*Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity. — Albert Einstein
*American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. - Wallace Stegner
Courage is not the absence of fear; it's taking action in the face of it. - Anonymous
The soul would not know rainbows if the eyes had not known tears. ~ Native American saying
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead
Life itself is hazardous . . . . There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn't know before: that there are no sharp rocks -- the road is covered with diamonds. -- Charlotte Joko Beck in Nothing Special
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand,
Nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship;
It is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one,
When they discover that someone else believes in them
And is willing to trust them.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows. - Ben Stein
*Our love and passion for something makes other people feel love and passion for it. It takes one person who’s awake to the possibilities, and everyone they touch will awaken to those possibilities. - Jane Hirshfield
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Teaching is learning again - Anonymous
To get into the core of God at his greatest, one must first get into the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not first known himself. - Meister Eckhard
I like food that is flavorful. Simmering food slowly, for a long time, helps the juices penetrate the whole. Hardly anyone simmers anything anymore. Everything is zapped in the microwave or cooked as quickly as possible. I think this reflects our spiritual life as well. Wisdom and wholeness deepen in us when we reflectively allow ideas and feelings to sit inside us for awhile. -- Joyce Rupp in Dear Heart, Come Home
If you want to change the world, first change your heart, then change your family, your community, your country, and then the world. ~ Confucius
It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.
- The Buddha
Remember that sometimes monsters only need to be kissed to be turned into beautiful princes and princesses. -- Madeleine L'Engle in Anytime Prayers
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. - Carl Jung
Life acquires meaning
When we face the conflict
Between our desires
And Reality - Deng Ming-dao
We’re all wounded. People who have lived life with any depth or taken any necessary risks in life have experienced loss and disappointment. The experience of being wounded, and what happens to one as one responds to the wound, gives us the wisdom to heal one another. - Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
*Like all weak men, he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. - W.
Prefer to be loved with respect rather than with passion, for that is a love suitable for many. - Balthasar Gracian
Make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction. - Balthasar Gracian
God is the lead dancer and the soul is the partner completely attuned to the rhythm and patterns set by the partner. She does not lead, but neither does she hang limp like a sack of potatoes. -- Thomas Merton quoted in Listening to the Music of the Spirit by David Lonsdale
Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it arises out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further developments. - Lewis Mumford
When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the fools are all in confederacy against him. - Jonathan Swift
He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger! - Confucius
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking as we used when we created them. -- Albert Einstein
If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.
- Chinese Proverb
*Enthusiasm displays the exuberance of life that is made manifest in the decision to work and create, to rejoice and dance. It changes the person into an entheos, that is, someone inhabited by God. . . . Nothing great and truly creative is ever achieved without the powerful influence of enthusiasm. - Leonardo Boff in Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. - T.H. Huxley
Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors. - Eugene O'Neil
*Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another. - Charles Caleb Colton
In the school of life, difficult people are the faculty. They teach us our most important spiritual lessons, the lessons that we would be most unlikely to learn on our own. - Mark
The man is only half himself; the other half is his expression. - Emerson
From the emperor down to the common people, all, without exception, must consider cultivation of the individual character as the root. If the root is in disorder, it is impossible for the branches to be in order. - the Ta Hsueh
What a great therapist, teacher, or coach does is to alert people to resources they did not realize they had. That is the ultimate gift. You don’t help people by telling them they’re powerless. - Nathaniel Branden
If you are not happy here and now, you never will be. - Taisen Deshimaru
*The desire for imaginary benefits often involves the loss of present blessings. - Aesop
The only lasting trauma is the one we suffer without positive change. - Leo Buscaglia
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them. - George Bernard Shaw
The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity, self-sufficiency , and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead. - Dr. William Menninger
In the long run we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Thought that can merge wholly into feeling,
Feeling that can merge wholly into thought -
These are the artist's highest joys. - Thomas Mann
A road that does not lead to other roads always has to be retraced, unless the traveler chooses to rust at the end of it. - Tehyi Hsieh
If God can forgive, redeem, and transform me, I must also believe that God can work such wonders with anyone. Love of enemies is seeing one's oppressors through the prism of the reign of God -- not only as they are now but also as they can be: transformed by the power of God. - Walter Wink in The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millenium
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer. - Sa'Di
To heal is not to cure. If it were, then true healing would not be possible, because sooner or later all of us will die. To heal is to choose knowledge over ignorance. To heal is to move forward and grow. - Carlos Warter
The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us. - Rollo May
All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some words or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightway all their words and actions lie in light before us. - Emerson
No man is a failure who is enjoying life. - William Feather
Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when you pursue it is always beyond your grasp, but, which, when you sit down may alight upon you. - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Religion is for people who are afraid of Hell,
Spirituality is for those who have been there. - Anonymous
How we appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it, how we lived within it and how it lived within us. - Stephen Levine
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth -- not going all the way, and not starting. - Buddha
Nothing prevents our being natural so much as the desire to appear so. - La Rouchefoucald
Once you have flown ...you will ever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return. - Leonardo da Vinci [who never flew]
Forgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful behavior. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling victimized and martyred. Rather it is the finishing of old business that allows us to experience the present, free of contamination from the past. - Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., Fire In The Soul
God loves us unconditionally, but there are consequences to our choices. If we choose to live outside Love's Presence, we must accept the results. Despite our inevitable poor decisions at times, God always allows us to choose again. And we can make a choice for Love. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
God speaks to us in a thousand voices, each with the same clear message: I love you. Please trust me on this one. -- Hugh Prather in Spiritual Notes to Myself
I find it as impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, as to know the whole without specifically knowing the parts. - Blaise Pascal
When an emotional injury takes place, the body begins a process as natural as the healing of a physical wound. Let the process happen. Trust that nature will do the healing. Know that the pain will pass, and, when it passes, you will be stronger, happier, more sensitive and aware. -Mel Colgrove
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince)
Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectation,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue. - Tao Te Ching, Translated by Stephen Mitchell
The degree to which we experience pain is determined by our sense of separation from God. We have strategies that mask our pain: we can lie inert on the sofa seemingly absorbed by TV, or cram ourselves with food, or keep ourselves too busy to feel. Sooner or later, the pain surfaces. When we willingly confront our pain--when we admit an ache--we open the door for God to heal us. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
*He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. - Montaigne
Applied to other people, forgiveness is a process through which we seek to free ourselves from the bondage to another person that is maintained for as long as we stand in judgment of them. - Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., Fire In The Soul
Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. - Rachel Naomi Remen
Jesus said, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. John 10:10. Many of us don't have life abundantly. We are only experiencing a portion of this Life. Sometimes our pain cuts us off from this greater living. We may only do enough spiritual work to ease the hurt. By developing a companionship with God, we can find fulfillment that goes beyond meager living or lightened pain. We can experience abundance every waking moment of our lives. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
Much of our frustration in life comes from attempting to control what we can't control and neglecting to control what we can. - Dr. Richard D. Dobbins
When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can find their own way. - Tao Te Ching, Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending. - Longfellow
Psychological courage entails a cleansing of the doors of perception, allowing us to see things as they really are rather than through the distorted lens of the past. The more we are cleansed of expectations, the more we see what is and the more we can respond to it creatively. - Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., Fire In The Soul
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
Dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
Is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
Is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail. - Tao Te Ching, Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Be still when you have nothing to say;
when genuine passion moves you,
say what you've got to say, and say it hot. - D.H. Lawrence
All of man's problems stem from his inability to sit alone in a room for any length of time. - Pascal
Life is fundamentally a matter of growing, a growth experience. Missing the mark is one of the ways in which we learn to hit the target. Failure is a vital part of achieving success. We have erroneously thought of success as getting there while actually success is earning the right to be there. And earning means learning. Setbacks, even failures, may be an important part of that learning. - Eric Butterworth, Spiritual Economics
Spirit has placed a dream in your heart for a better world, starting with your family, extending to your work, community, country and stretching beyond your nation. Speak your truth and inspire others, for you are meant to make a significant and sizable difference. --Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
The life which is unexamined is not worth living. - Plato
A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things. - Jacques Maritain
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it. - Emerson
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it. - Krishnamurti
When viewed correctly, fear can be reinterpreted as our mind's invitation for us to rise to a higher level of freedom. We are not being called to run away from danger, but toward safety. And there is a world of difference between these two directions. - Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, Teach Only Love
Ultimately, what really matters is the love you give, the love you receive, and the love you leave. That's what we learn when we come together in spiritual community. We learn the three words to which it all boils down: Put love first. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt {1858-1919 American President}
The literal message of 1 Corinthians 13: 6,7 is, Love believes the best about someone else. When you’re inclined to mistrust and suspect, look for the positive intention instead. Seek the good and you will find it. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
The experience of love and peace is the only thing of importance that is communicated. It is this attitude of the heart, and not what is said between two people, that does healing work in both directions. - Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, Teach Only Love
We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - John. F. Kennedy
We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have labored in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it. - St. Thomas Aquinas
There is an important distinction to be made between a religiously based and a spiritually based political impulse. While religion is a force that either creatively or noncreatively separates us, spirituality is a force that unites us by reminding us of our fundamental oneness. The religionization of American politics is dangerous; the spiritualization of our political consciousness is imperative. - Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America
The means must be as pure as the end, for in the long run of history, immoral destructive means cannot bring about moral and constructive ends. - Dr. Martin Luther King
The greatest contribution a liberal can make to a political renaissance in
It is the role of religion to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. - anonymous
We will not solve the problems of this world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. - Albert Einstein
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Politicians can be likened to doctors. We have overestimated their role in healing society, as we once overestimated the doctor’s role in healing our bodies. No doctor can guarantee physical health to a patient who refuses to take care of her body, and no leader can guarantee social health to a people who refuse to take care of their society. - Marianne Williamson, The Healing of
Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Our new business model, then, should not be how to make money, but rather how to further the human good. - Marianne Williamson, The Healing of
The first responsibility of love is to listen. - Paul Tillich
Too many Americans today define a political meeting as a place where we go to be with others who are smart enough to look at the world exactly as we do, all of us joining together in a self-congratulatory spirit to figure out how to impose our opinions on those not yet intelligent enough to agree with us. We must grow to the next level of political maturity. Our most critical need is for a mode of genuine reconciliation and synergistic dialogue among opposing viewpoints. That is the new politics because it retrieves the process of real democracy. The adversarial games that define politics today are psychologically and socially destructive. - Marianne Williamson, The Healing of
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi
Health is inner peace. Therefore, healing is letting go of fear. To make changing the body our goal is to fail to recognize that our single goal is peace of mind. - Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, Teach Only Love
The word silly derives from the Greek selig meaning blessed. There is something sacred in being able to be silly. - Paul Pearsall in The Heart's Code
Breakdown is inherent in the family relationship, and the tendency is to move into fear. In fear, we either become aggressive, trying to mold others to our will, or we retract, withholding our love. Make love your habit, regardless of the circumstance, and breakdown will give way to breakthrough. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
The purpose of love is to find a partner we can grow with, through the barriers that keep love at bay, to the center of the universe that exist inside all of us. Getting past the barriers, those walls that surround our hearts, means hanging around long enough to get a look at what they are. - Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth
It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute, that gives meaning to our lives. - Anthony Robbins
I would rather labor on earth in service to another; to a man who is landless with little to live on, than be king over all the dead. - Homer
But after I was twenty I worried endlessly -- about all the impressions I made and how people were evaluating me. Only sometime after turning fifty did I realize that they hardly ever thought about me at all. - Anthony de Mello in One Minute Wisdom
Watch out for emergencies. They are your big chance. - Fritz Reiner
Have confidence in the truth, although you may not be able to comprehend it, although you may suppose its sweetness to be bitter, although you may shrink from it at first. Trust in the Truth...Have faith in the Truth and live it. - Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada
Our goal is peace now -- this very instant. It is central to our happiness that our years, long or short, be free of anger and that our body be used as a means of giving others the gift of kindness. - Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, Teach Only Love
It's a misguided American dream that decrees: 'If we can only get more, we will be happy, that hypnotizes us into believing that a fancier car or bigger house will fill and satisfy our souls. In reality, what enriches the soul is not acquiring, but giving. We can live primarily as consumers or givers. The latter brings freedom and an everlasting sense of prosperity. - Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey
People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Abe Lincoln
Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. – Confucius
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. - William Ellery Channing
These bodies are perishable; but the dwellers in these bodies are eternal, indestructible and impenetrable. - The Bhagavad Gita, Book of Daily Thoughts and Prayers
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order. - Henry Miller
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere, before him, I may think aloud. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship
The spiritual path, as Meister Eckhart observed, has more to do with subtraction than with addition. It is not so much a matter of adding all the active virtues to one's practice of living as of relinquishing everything that can possibly be abandoned. How much can you leave behind? -
Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life. -
Our repeated failures to fully act as we would wish must not discourage us. It is the sincere intention that is the essential thing, and this will in time release us from the bondage of habits which at present seem almost insuperable. - Thomas Troward
*Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. - Robert A. Heinlein
Life's Lessons
After a while you learn the difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
You learn that love isn't leaning but lending support.
You begin to accept your defeats with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child.
You decide to build your roads on today,
for tomorrow's ground is too uncertain.
You help someone plant a garden instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
You learn that God has given you the strength to endure
and that you really do have worth.
Author Unknown
I see letters I have received as sacraments, holy things, paper tabernacles that contain the love of my friends. - Edward Hays in Secular Sanctity
Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, we readily believe. - Demosthenes
There's nothing more dangerous than an idea if it’s the only one you have. - Mark Twain
A man must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will he fully understand the world in which he lives. - Socrates
*So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key. - The Eagles, Already Gone
That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes. - Denis Waitley {American Speaker, Author & Psychologist}
Give me a place to stand and I will move the world. - Archimedes
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. - John F. Kennedy
Proverbs tells us: A cheerful face is like medicine to the weary soul. We all have relationships that are truly life-giving. There are some people around whom we can always be ourselves. Airs and pretensions disappear. These special individuals never try to change us, but being in their very presence makes us want to be a better person. Acknowledge these individuals in your life. Let them know the powerful difference they make to you. Tell at least one today. - Mary Manin Morrissey
Dust is a protective coating for fine furniture. - Mario Burata
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. - Helen Keller
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