Wise Words...

"Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening." George Gurdjieff
"With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world." Dalai Lama
"If each of us sweeps in front of our own steps, the whole world will be clean." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others." Solomon Ibn Gabriol
"One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little." Alexander Chase
"The man of wisdom is never of two minds;the man of benevolence never worries;the man of courage is never afraid."Confucius
"The One manifests as the many, the formless putting on forms." Rig Veda
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Count Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (1828-1910)
"To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." E. E. Cummings, poet, artist, playwright and novelist (1894-1962)
"Know thyself." Inscription at the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece
"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." Andre Gide, French author (1869-1951)
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval." Mark Twain
"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." Carl Jung
"Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread." Richard Wright, American author (1908-1960)
"Enlightenment must come little by little-otherwise it would overwhelm." Idries Shah
"A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror." Kahlil Gibran
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." Voltaire
"If you dare to take up the banner of enlightenment, you will be attacked from all sides. From the inside you will be attacked by your own mind and from the outside you will be attacked by everyone else's mind. Anyone who dares to succeed automatically presents a huge threat. If true freedom is going to survive within you, you have to be willing to fight for it. You have to have a sword in each hand at all times. One sword is for your own mind and the other sword is for everyone else's mind. You must be ready to use them. Anyone who wants to be truly free must be willing to stand alone in the truth." Andrew Cohen
"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." Andre Gide
"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." Ludwig Börne
"We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it." Albert Szent-Györgyi
"Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water." Zen Buddhist Proverb
"The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?" Chuang Tzu
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." Henri Louis Bergson
"You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep." Navajo Proverb
"Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked."Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat."I don't know," Alice answered."Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter.""Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
"No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head". Terry Josephson
"A thousand men can't undress a naked man." Greek Proverb
"If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed:I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made." W.B. Yeats
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?" Maurice Freehill
"A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence." Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place." Zen
"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one." H. L. Mencken
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." Matsuo Basho
"Illness is not cured by saying the word 'medicine,' but by taking medicine. Enlightenment is not achieved by repeating the word 'God' but by directly experiencing God. Talk as much philosophy as you like, worship as many gods as you please, observe as many ceremonies and sing devotional hymns, but liberation will never come, even after a hundred eons, without realising Oneness, Wholeness." Shankara
"Enlightenment means life lived in accord with all the laws of nature." Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
". . . religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." Einstein
"Divine unity (tawhid) is the return of man to his origin, so that he will become as he was before he came into being." Imam Abu'l-Qasim Al-Junayd 910 AD
"In the death of the self lies the life of the heart." Imam Ja'far Al-Sadiq - 8th century
"All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop." Kabir
"If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day." Alex Noble
"Whatever is at the centre of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power." Stephen Covey
"He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today." Tryon Edwards
"Day and night cannot dwell together." Duwamish
"Before eating, always take time to thank the food." Arapaho
"When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us." Arapaho
"Those that lie down with dogs, get up with fleas." Blackfoot Tribe
"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice." Cherokee
"When the white man discovered this country Indians were running it. No taxes no debt, women did all the work. White man thought he could improve on a system like this." Cherokee
"Our first teacher is our own heart." Cheyenne
"All who have died are equal." Commanche
"Man's law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit remain always the same." Crow
"You already possess everything necessary to become great." Crow
"Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant." Kiowa
"When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard." Lakota
"Intuition does not always appear as the ingenious breakthrough or something grandiose. Intuitive thoughts, feelings, and solutions often manifest themselves as good old common sense. Common sense is efficient." Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence
"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, the other helps you make a life." Sandra Carey
"Preconcieved notions are the locks on the door to wisdom." Merry Browne
"Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it." David Starr Jordan
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner." General Omar Bradley
"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire." Ferdinand Foch
"There is only one-way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man." Alan Paton
"When I discover who I am, I'll be free." Ralph Ellison
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." Alexander Graham Bell
"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be." Patanjali (c. 1st to 3rd century BC)
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought." Buddha
"Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery." Matthew Arnold
"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have." Doris Mortman
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Leo Tolstoy
"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstacy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed." Krishnamurti
"The shape of our lives is defined by our insertion into institutions and systems whose interlocking power generates the "virtual reality" we experience. Such 'knowledge' is so thoroughly a part of our worldview that it simply would not occur to most people to question it. Yet underneath this reality is another, subinstitutional reality in which very different responses are simply acted out. This is the reality in which everyone, until very recently, lived." David Schwartz
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense." Buddha
"Sometimes it feels like energy or electricity when it is moving in and through us, but spiritual power is really a distinctive kind of knowledge that is like the key that opens the door or the switch that starts the energy moving." Frank Fools Crow - Legendary Shaman of the Teton Sioux
"The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." Marilyn Ferguson
"Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." Albert Einstein
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." Hans Margolius
"The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves." Kahlil Gilbran
"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world." George Bernard Shaw
"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." Henri Bergson
"I cannot eat an elephant.
Yes you can.
How?
One bite at a time."
"If someone is too tired to give you a smile, leave one of your own, because no one needs a smile as much as those who have none to give." Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch
"I've never known any human being, high or humble, who ever regretted, when nearing life's end, having done kindly deeds. But I have known more than one millionaire who became haunted by the realization that they had led selfish lives." B. C. Forbes
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are trulyendless." Mother Theresa
"One man with courage makes a majority." Andrew Jackson
"In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?" Igor Stravinsky
"We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another." Luciano de Crescenzo
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." Buddha
"The only real valuable thing is intuition." Albert Einstein
"Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level." Dr. Joyce Brothers
"The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world." B. C. Forbes
"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." Pericles
"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." Fr. Alfred D'Souza
"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you." Carl Sandburg
"All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it." Samuel Butler
"Yesterday is a cancelled check; Tomorrow is a promissory note; Today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely." Kim Lyons