With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life lived well used brings happy death.
It is extroversion that wastes our energy and makes us feel weak. In a state of introversion we think less and speak less. We then have the power to put into action whatever we think and whatever we need to do.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who walk into a room and say, "There you are" and those who say, "Here I am"
As we mature spiritually there is less need to have our self-respect bolstered by praise and special attention. As our thought processes become more compassionate and less self obsessed, we feel increasingly satisfied with ourselves and our lives. We relate to people more easily and feel no need to draw attention to our successes or complain about our problems.
Marriage is not a ritual or an end.
It is a long, intricate,
intimate dance together
and nothing matters more
than your own sense of balance
and your choice of partner.
There is only one happiness in life,
to love and be loved.
Respect for others means offering criticism only where there is the strength to withstand it.
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.
A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.
