Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised by one moment every so often to remind me that joy is possible, even if I have to pay for it later.
When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
The hard work of sowing seed in what looks like perfectly empty earth has a time of harvest. All suffering, pain, emptiness, disappointment is seed: sow it in God and He will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.
Love is fragile -- she was thinking -- but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love-words, the tenderness learned, and treasured up for the next lover.
I happen to love a good run almost as much as sex. Like sex, there are often times I don't think I'm interested until I'm into it. Unlike sex, I do have to get out of bed and into the elements. I hate leaving bed.
The notion that economic life is a distinct realm, governed by immutable laws of narrow self-interest, is giving way to a much older notion: economic life is only one strand in the rich web of human relationships.
When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say.
My problem with all forms of fundamentalism is that the position is fixed. This is like talking about a fixed position as seen from a moving jet: it's disappearing over the horizon with or without your permission.
Human beings go to church. The guy in the front dressed in black is the guy you defer to. He is in charge of the mysteries of universe, which ordinary human beings don't seem to have the inclination to understand.
Some people travel to other dimensions in their astral bodies when they meditate. But astral traveling doesn't bring a person lasting happiness. If astral traveling is not done properly, it can be quite dangerous.
You can get so caught up in learning all about reincarnation, you can get so caught up in learning about structures, fascinating though they may be, that you're not free; you're just studying a different textbook.
It is acceptance of the will of God - waiting, if necessary, forever, happily rising above your desires and above your frustrations to always do what is right. Always do what is right. This is the spiritual study.
I am very interested in the enlightenment of women. Very few teachers of advanced self discovery work with women, and if they do it's usually in a very second handed way. They treat women as second class citizens.
Some people harbor the idea or belief that all teachers should teach for free. Obviously these people have never been teachers, particularly in the twentieth century. Teaching meditation is a very expensive hobby.
Etiquette is an intelligent way to live. There are certain ways of living you will learn being around advanced students and mostly your teacher. These are methods that have been handed down for thousands of years.
It is very important to always hold the thought of an enlightened teacher in your mind in a very positive way. When you direct negative energy towards someone who is powerful, it has a terrible bounce-back effect.
You have to be very, very careful not to pick up too much of the lower energies, the toxic energies, because they'll make you very ill. They can kill you. They can cause cancer, debilitative diseases of all types.
How can you possibly be happy if you think you're a person? Because we all know, just by definition, that people are definitely not happy because they take everything too seriously. They take themselves seriously.
They get you when you're young. When you are a kid, you are conditioned. You are taught language, customs, and right and wrong. You are filled with fears. This conditioning interferes with your psychic perception.
At the end of your life you will probably end up in an old-age home, or in a back room in one of your children's houses, left only with a handful of fading memories and a body racked with great pain and suffering.
Life is forever. Death is only a temporary abridgment. It is just a state of transition where you will move from one world into another. You will move from the physical to the causal, from matter into pure energy.
The tantras can be very confusing for a person who is new to Buddhism, and for several thousand years the rule was not to expose a person or a new monk to the tantras until they had practiced for many, many years.
As long as we remain self-reflective and keep looking at who and what we are, as long as we keep our analysis that way, then there's no freedom. We're just trying clothes on in front of a mirror and admiring them.
If someone has something you want, they can wrap you - they can make you think that they've got something that you have to get from them. They're the exclusive source. They are the only one who can make you happy.
The Writer's Oath I promise solemnly: 1. to write as often and as much as I can, 2. to respect my writing self, and 3. to nurture the writing of others. I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.
Jabs are the lightweight pieces of content that benefit your customers by making them laugh, snicker, ponder, play a game, feel appreciated, or escape; right hooks are calls to action that benefit your businesses.
Medical treatment is emergency care for symptoms that have developed over a long period of time. The symptom is the flower on a plant. Treating the symptom is picking the flower, while the plant remains untouched.
We are evolving as one species - not only as Americans, Syrians, Russians, Chinese, and jihadists. We cannot attack one without inflicting forms of violence and destruction upon ourselves. This is our new reality.
We have built our identities in many respects based on the guilt-ridden stories we have been told about our creation. For women, it is a very damning knowledge to be portrayed as curious and careless seductresses.
As you begin this day, tell yourself, Today I am incarnated anew! I am released from the hypnosis of my old habits and mistakes! Everything that I have long dreamed of doing I will accomplish in this, my new life.
The public loves to create a hero....Sometimes I think they do it for the sheer joy of knocking him down from the highest peak. Like a child who builds a house of blocks and then destroys it with one vicious kick.
Do not let trifles disturb your tranquility of mind. The little pin-pricks of daily life when dwelt upon and magnified, may do great damage, but if ignored or dismissed from thought, will disappear from inanition.
Creativity arises from a constant churn of ideas, and one of the easiest ways to encourage that fertile froth is to keep your mind engaged with your project. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.
I had been obsessed with the Arthurian legends all my life, and I knew that that would work its way into any trilogy I wrote. I was fascinated by the Eddas, the Norse and Icelandic legends, Odin on the world tree.
I'm happier not pretending I know anything about El Cid in Spain. He's a Spanish national hero. I'd rather invent a character inspired by him but clearly not identical to him. And then I feel liberated creatively.
The more popular a person thinks he is in the blogosphere, the thinner his skin and the thicker his hypocrisy. This should be exactly the opposite: the higher you go the thicker the skin and thinner the hypocrisy.
I don't think Steve Jobs nauseated people when talking about how great Apple stuff was. The reason why he didn't nauseate people is because it was true. The start of all great marketing is to have a great product.
My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write.
patriarchal academic hierarchies in science and technology are now overspecialized and abstract, perhaps because they have systematically excluded women, as well as minorities, with challenging, alternative views.
Contrary to economists' beliefs, the informal sectors of the world's economies, in total, are predominant, and the institutionalized, monetized sectors grow out of them and rest upon them, rather than the reverse.
The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
God's commands are designed to guide you to life's very best. You will not obey Him, if you do not believe Him and trust Him. You cannot believe Him if you do not love Him. You cannot love Him unless you know Him.
The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.
The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.
But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely."
If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural.
If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words.