Quotes

Below are some of my favorite quotations. They come from many different sources, though I found a number of them in the “Sunbeams” section of The Sun Magazine. If you have other quotes to offer, please send them along for possible addition to this page.

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The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

–Frederick Buechner

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature.

If the only prayer in your life is “thank you,” that would suffice.

There are three things which are real: God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?

Dance like no one is watching, Love like you’ll never be hurt, Sing like no one is listening, Live like it’s heaven on earth.

One of the annoying things about free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding someone to blame your troubles on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.

Make your word law! . . . If you say it, live up to it lovingly.

The mind is a jail built out of bullshit. . . . The way out is to get good at telling the truth.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true.

May the god of your choice bless you.

Only in the last moment in history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Every emotional upset is a fight with God. He didn’t give us what we wanted . . . again.

Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.

That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.

To say your fate is not tied to my fate is like saying, “Your end of the boat is sinking.”

A time comes when silence is betrayal.

Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.

–Tom Robbins

That millions share the same forms of mental pathology does not make those people sane.

If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Fear not that life shall come to an end but rather that it shall never have a beginning.

I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.

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

I asked the clothing–store clerk if she had anything to make me look thinner, and she said, “How about a week in Bangladesh?”

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.

Man in the Cook County Jail being strapped into the electric chair: “This will certainly teach me a lesson.”

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of readiness to die.

We all breathe the same air and drink from the same aquifer. We don’t have to search for common ground; we live on it.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and the wrong which will be imposed upon them.

–Frederick Douglass

When I despair I turn to think that all through history, the way of Truth and Love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end they always fall, always. Remember this, always…

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

A “No” uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a “Yes” merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

The way out is via the door. Why is it that more people don’t use this method?

Lord, grant that I may seek to comfort rather than be comforted; to love rather than to be loved.

Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.

It takes a very secure person to surrender to another in love.

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, whom would you call and what would you say. And why are you waiting?

Death belongs to life as birth does.

Work as if everything depends on work. Pray as if everything depends on prayer.

“I think,” said Christopher Robin, “that we ought to eat all our provisions now, so we won’t have so much to carry.”

When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitches to everything in the universe.

You are powerful. Whatever you set your mind on having, you will have. Whatever you decide to be, you will be. The evidence is all around you. The power of your will has brought you precisely to where you are right now.

If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.

“They” are not the enemy. The liar within us who created “them” is.

Work is love made visible.

Work is not always required . . . there is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.

One touch is worth ten thousand words.

For I tell you this: at the critical juncture in all human relations, there is only one question: What would love do now?

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

When you are for me as much as you are for yourself, and I am for you as much as I am for myself, we will start to understand the meaning of our relationship.

Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

There is only one church and your membership is your belly button.

A man needs a little madness or else he never dares to cut the rope and be free.

There are never enough “I love yous.”

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

What one does is what counts. Not what one has the intention of doing.

When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.

In relationships, “resentment” is the real four–letter word.

When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself.

Why should we consider it a serious pathology for one person to abandon one child, but not a serious pathology for a government to abandon millions of children?

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe.

We all lie like hell. It wears us out. It is the major source of all human stress. Lying kills people.

Nothing is painful in and of itself. Pain is a result of wrong thought. It is an error in thinking. . . . Pain results from a judgment you have made about a thing. Remove the judgment and the pain disappears.

Fear is excitement without the breath.

Some people say there is a God; others say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

–William Butler Yeats

Bidden or unbidden, God is present.

–Erasmus

Every person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

As a well–spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want to do and then advise them to do it.

The world is divided into people who think they are right.

What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Zeus does not bring all men’s plans to fulfillment.

You can’t do anything again; but you can do something similar.

To discover what you really want, look at what you’ve got.

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.

Somebody’s boring me . . . I think it’s me.

If you were absolutely fearless, would you be earning a living in exactly the same way as you are now?

Spirituality cannot be something a person toys with, a little compartment of their lives. It has to be at the core, in a way that affects every other part of their lives.

Any man who doesn’t cry scares me a little bit.

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

People say I don’t take criticism very well, but I say what the hell do they know?

No one can hurt you without your consent.

I am glad I did it, partly because it was well worth it, and chiefly because I shall never have to do it again.

Each person is a child of God. See the unfolding of God in each person you meet.

You know “that look” women get when they want sex? Me neither.

The central fact of my own life is my death. After a while, it will come to nothing. Whenever I have the courage to face this, my priorities become clear.

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

Depression is more than low self–esteem; it is a distant early warning that you are on the wrong path and that something in you is being pressed down, beat on, kept imprisoned, dishonored.

Everything can be taken from a man but the last of the human freedoms—the right to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, the right to choose one’s own way.

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

I am I plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Monday, August 14th, 2006

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