Quotes and Quick Inspiration

Volume Six

From Tom Spencer's Soul of the Garden

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Our only security is our ability to change.

- John Lilly

Love, and do what you like.

- Saint Augustine

To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.

- Henri Matisse

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.

- James Oppenheim

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

- Chinese Proverb
 

Weeds are flowers, too...when you get to know them.

-  W. Pooh

An optimist is the human personification of spring.

- Susan J. Bissonette

When Buddhists say, “A bodhisattva fears not the result, but only the cause,” they mean that we must expend the bulk of our energy planting good roots today, rather than fretting about the plants that are already growing from the roots we planted in the past.

-Master Hsing Yun, "Describing the Indescribable"
 

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

- Masanobu Fukuoka

On a certain day, month and year one should observe the ceremony of tree-planting. Thus, one fulfils one’s responsibilities, serves one’s fellow-beings which not only brings happiness but benefits all.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

- Anne Frank

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

- Mahatma Gandhi

A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.

- The Wizard to the Tin Man

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.

- Anna Quindlen

I am the ocean.
All the worlds are like waves.

This is the truth.

Nothing to hold on to,
Nothing to let go of,
Nothing to dissolve.

-Ashtavakra Gita 6:2

Things have done their part; it is for us to do ours...

- R.H. Blyth
 

It is said that there are only two tragedies in life: not getting what one wants, and getting it.

-Bhanta Henepola Gunaratana, "Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness"


Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

- Ovid
 

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

- Elton Trueblood
 

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

- Thomas a Kempis

Even as the sun shines and fills all space
With light, above, below, across, so shines
The Lord of Love and fills the hearts of all created beings.

-Shvetashvatara Upanishad

There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained its fruits. Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method. If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

-“The Practice of Meditation,” Zen Master Dogen

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

- Elbert Hubbard

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


True religion is the life we live, not the creed we profess.

- J.F. Wright

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war
spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside,
sowing clover.

- Wendell Berry , 1968

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

- Paul Boese

Those who hear this truth even once and listen with a grateful heart, treasuring it, revering it, gain blessings without end.

-Hakuin Zenji, "Song of Zazen"

It is both near and far, both within and without every creature; it moves and is unmoving. In its subtlety it is beyond comprehension. It is invisible, yet appears divided in separate creatures. Know it to be the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer.

Dwelling in every heart, it is beyond darkness. It is called the light of the lights, the object and goal of knowledge, and knowledge itself.

-Bhagavad Gita 13:15-17

There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
 

- Edith Wharton

Only when a man sees this universe as God does the veil fall from his eyes; then that man, purified and cleansed, finds his whole vision changed.

-Vivekananda

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.

 - Oscar Wilde

Talk as much philosophy as you like,
worship as many gods as you please,
observe ceremonies and sing devotional hymns,
but liberation will never come, even after a hundred
aeons, without realizing the Oneness.

- Sankara

In your meditation you yourself are the mirror reflecting the solution of your problems. The human mind has absolute freedom within its true nature. You can attain your freedom intuitively. Do not work for freedom, rather allow the practice itself to be liberation.

- “The Practice of Meditation,” Zen Master Dogen

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.

- e.e. cummings

Learn to pause ... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you.

- Doug King

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.

- James Dent

Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.
 

- Socrates.

You cannot have everything. I mean, where would you put it?

- Steven Wright