Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We are born male. We must learn to be men.
It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
Our life is a work of art. We must seek always to be its artist.
Our brightest dreams and our greatest fears are just over the horizon.
We may not all live holy lives, but we live in a world alive with holy moments.
Great joys make us love the world. Great sadnesses make us understand the world.
We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.
Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.
The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.
It is not our task to judge the worthiness of our path; it is our task to walk our path with worthiness.
We live in a world alive with holy moments. We need only take the time to bring these moments into the light.
Life is an endlessly creative experience, and we are shaping ourselves at every moment by every decision we make.
Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.
We must find a way to replace yearning for what life has withheld from us with gratitude for what we have been given.
When you are here, you are here. When you are gone, you are gone. It isn't a problem to be gone, so long as you are really here when you're here.
Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this life.
We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways.
Until you have a son of your own... you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son.
Money is central to our lives. Yet money is not of central importance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the lasting values that make life worth living.
Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day.
Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.
We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware – beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
This is important. Money on its most basic level is a hard fact - you either have it or you don't. But on it's emotional level it is purely a fiction. It becomes what you let it become.
Our actions in this world, and our ability to rise above the limits of our own self-interest, live on far beyond us and play their humble part in shaping a world of spirituality and peace.
Forgiveness allows us to live in the sunlight of the present, not the darkness of the past. Forgiveness alone, of all our human actions, opens up the world to the miracle of infinite possibility.
The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it's various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God.
Remember that you don't choose love; love chooses you. All you really can do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing then reach out and give it away.
Remember that you don't choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away.
You want to know how to be like indians? Live close to the earth. Get rid of some of your things. Help each other. Talk to the creator. Be quiet more. Listen to the earth instead of building things on it all the time.
Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons from coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you.
But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch elders carefully. They were you and you will be them. You carry the seeds of your old age in you at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time they see you.
My fatherhood made me understand my parents and to honor them more for the love they gave. My sonhood was revealed to me in its own perfection and I understood the reason the Chinese so value filiality, the responsibility of the son to honor the parents.
The power of this experience [fatherhood] can never be explained. It is one of those joyful codings that rumbles in the species far below understanding. When it is experienced it makes you one with all men in a way that fills you with warmth and harmony.
This is not to say that becoming a father automatically makes you a good father. Fatherhood, like marriage, is a constant struggle against your limitations and self-interests. But the urge to be a perfect father is there, because your child is a perfect gift.
In times past there were rituals of passage that conducted a boy into manhood, where other men passed along the wisdom and responsibilities that needed to be shared. But today we have no rituals. We are not conducted into manhood; we simply find ourselves there.
In a perfect world perhaps we would all see more clearly. But this is not a perfect world, and it is enough to hope that each of us will share our talents, and find the balance between greed and benevolence that will allow us to live and thrive and help the world around us grow.
You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn't even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother - you can't own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her?
...Good leaders wait to be called and they give up their power when they are no longer needed. Selfish men and fools put themselves first and keep their power until someone throws them out. It is no good to have a way where selfish men and fools fight with each other to be leaders, while the good ones watch.
Do not grieve. Misfortune will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.
It is the same for all men. None of us can escape this shadow of the father, even if that shadow fills us with fear, even if it has no name or face. To be worthy of that man, to prove something to that man, to exorcise the memory of that man from every corner of our life--however it affects us, the shadow of that man cannot be denied.
Like children, the elders are a burden. But unlike children, they offer no hope or promise. They are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and so serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.
The human being is a surprisingly resilient organism. We are impelled toward health not sickness. Your spirit, as surely as your body, will try to heal....So you should not fear tragedy and suffering. Like love, they make you more a part of the human family. From them can come your greatest creativity. They are the fire that burns you pure.
I want you to consider this distinction as you go forward in life. Being male is not enough; being a man is a right to be earned and an honor to be cherished. I cannot tell you how to earn that right or deserve that honor. . . but I can tell you that the formation of your manhood must be a conscious act governed by the highest vision of the man you want to be.
That is the magic of travel. You leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all it's richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space. You return a different person.
Place yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion, and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life, you know more about something than anyone else on earth. The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.
That is why we need to travel. If we don't offer ourself to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.
It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I Iook once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. They tell me to be patient. They tell me I cannot change what is, I can only hope to change what will become. Let the grasses grow over our scars, they say, and let flowers bloom over our wounds.
When you give of yourself something new comes in to being... the world expands, a bit of goodness is brought forth and a small miracle occurs. You must never underestimate this miracle. Too many good people think they have to become Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer, or even Santa Claus, and perform great acts if they are to be givers. They don't see the simple openings of the heart that can be practiced anywhere with almost anyone.
There are many ways to seek wisdom. There is travel, there are masters, there is service. There is staring into the eyes of children and elders and lovers and strangers. There is sitting silently in one spot and there is being swept along in life's turbulent current. Life itself will grant you wisdom in ways you may neither understand nor choose. It is up to you to be open to all these sources of wisdom and to embrace them with your whole heart.
Until you have a son of your own . . . you will never know the joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass something good and hopeful into the hands of his son. And you will never know the heartbreak of the fathers who are haunted by the personal demons that keep them from being the men they want their sons to be.