Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Only a moral education based on free inner discipline can bring to bear a salutary action and lead to a true morality.
If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.
There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords
Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.
Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times.
At the intersection where your gifts, talents, and abilities meet a human need; therein you will discover your purpose
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
The life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.
The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.
Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.
Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others
When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.
Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life, it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism.
Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity: To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
Diversity is essential to happiness and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect in all planned social systems.
To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.
All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.
It could be that the total scenario for human beings is an insoluble mystery until we die, followed by nothing at all.
Little countries do not have this luxury of defending themselves. We have to do it before the fact, not after the fact
The Three Armies can be deprived of their commanding officer, but even a common man cannot be deprived of his purpose.
There is one single thread binding my way together...the way of the Master consists in doing one's best...that is all.
Love should start from people close to us, then be extended to other people, to strangers, and eventually to the world
The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
The gentleman is calm and at ease. The gentleman is dignified but not proud; the small man is proud but not dignified.
Let every man consider virtue as what devolves on himself. He may not yield the performance of it even to his teacher.
We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
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We think there is color, we think there is sweet, we think there is bitter, but in reality there are atoms and a void.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
He was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your insatiable greed."
Know that the true dharma emerges of itself [during the practice of zazen], clearing away hindrances and distractions.
People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.
To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.
Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.
'Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.
Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.
Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.
People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.
I consider that all which lives must feed itself and nourish itself in a manner suitable to the way in which it lives.
The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.
The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.
The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what is beautiful, torments himself to give us what is new.