Life Quotes - Page 481

Man is more noble dead than alive, because in returning to the earth he becomes earth, and nothing is nobler than the earth that entombs us, closes our eyes, and blossoms in a beautiful eterneity.

If there is something in you that is constantly pulling you back, then know that this might possess a power that inhibits you

Creation is thus God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian Philip Sherrard has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden Being." This means that we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate, for to every creature, the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. (pg. 308, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)

Be the positive impact on the lives of others.

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs.In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production.Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal.Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness.Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.'Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature.Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.

How many minutes will still die in the swamp of your illusion of being human?

Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go. Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day. maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.

I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.

Integrity, undivided loyalty, love. The pure in heart have a special blessing. Because there is no limit to how good life can become.

Every sphere of life demands enduring spirit and strength.

The God that is nearest to you in the people around you is the real one you need

Never live at the mercy of people because they can run out of mercy when you needed them the most.

There in the gap between what my eyes see and what my mind is unable to explain, I am sure the absolute truth lies, yet, I cannot grasp it.

Smartass Disciple: Three years! I've listened you preaching just for this silly truth?Master of Stupidity: Who said I was preaching? Who said anything about the truth?

He sang softly, less with words and more with thought. She cradled his head, stitching together his fragmented heart.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience… but we’d be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives… because we didn’t like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution?

When you become the source of joy, when you become the source of peace, your world and world around you become joyful and peaceful. you become the symbol and messenger of joy and peace.

I write about pain so you know you're not alone. I've felt it too. I'm releasing it... in hope that you will too.

A machine! I have become a machine! It has taken over my life. How ironic! In a world of freedom and independence, my entire life now depends on a machine!

As the rain falls and the sun shines, they grow, grow, grow; minds so open, they go through life aware and accepting, seeing light where there's dark, seeing possibility in dead ends, tasting victory as others spit out failure, questioning where others accept. Just a little less jaded, a little less cynical.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

You have to know yourself enough to be able to choose friends that you will be compatible with.

It was a once in a lifetime thing. I hate to think it but I bet it's true. It's too bad for us that our once in a lifetime happened when were too young to handle it.

If your greatest wish is to be happy, you are clever; if it is to make others happy, you are virtuous; but if it is to make yourself and others happy, you are wise.

Your life as a Christian must be that which glorifies God

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer but rather what they miss.

It wasn't what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestones marked its progress. No trees grew along it. No dappled shadows shaded it. No mists rolled over it. No birds circled it. No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told. She dreaded it too much. So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would have been Not to Know, Not to know what each day had in store for her. Not to know where she might be, next month, next year. Ten years on. Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend.

Life is the journey of coming home to ourselves.

Forgive me, Magnus.’‘I don’t know if I can.’‘You must.’Still looking into the distance, he said, ‘You need my forgiveness?’‘No. I’m dead. You can do nothing for me. You need to forgive me so you can live.

Kil your positive attitudes and you'll kill your chances of succeeding in life.

It seemed as if the longer she lived, the more was taken from her. Not gradually, as old age fell into the inevitable, but lobbed off in great chunks, the healthy branches sacrificed along with the frail.

The New Man is the most important things that is happening in the world today.The new man will have to find new forms of communication, working together and sharing, because the old man and the old society will not disappear immediately. The old man will also put up a fight.The new man is a new humanity. Up to now, man has lived a pathological life, a neurotic life, a destructive life. During modern times, during the last 3000 years, there have been 6000 wars. You can not call this humanity healthy.Once in a while a Buddha, a Jesus, a Socrates, appeared, but each person is born to be a Buddha.How can I become the new man? The new man means a new consciousness, a new being. Humanity can not be saved if the new man does not arrive. Before it was not a necessity, but now it is absolutely necessary because now the war technology can destroy the whole earth. if not the new man arrives, if not people become more aware, awake and conscious, then this earth will not survive.The New Man means to develop all the three dimensions of being, all the three doors to God: the head, the dimension of thinking, logic and reason, the heart, the dimension of joy, trust, intuition, relationships, beauty, creativity and a sense of unity in love and the being, the dimension of meditation, silence, emptiness and oneness with life.The first level of the head is the dimension of ideas, intellect, hypothesis, theories, logic, analysis, rationality and dualistic thinking.The first level is the level of the mind, which means a continuous oscillation like a pendulum between the mind's memories of the past and the ideas, dreams and expectations of the future.The second level of the heart is the dimension of joy, acceptance, trust, understanding, trust, friendship, relationships, intuition, empathy, creativity, compassion, humor, playfulness and a sense of unity in love. The third level of being is the dimension of presence, awareness, meditation, silence, emptiness and wholeness. The third level is our connection with our inner life source.The new man means awareness, consciousness, love and creativity.The new man means meditation, to be in contact with our own inner source of silence.And if more people become meditative, the earth becomes filled with the fragrance of the new man.

...Bad leaders are known to destroy one, more or even all of the foundations of their people’s way of life...

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.

With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair.

When you want to share something with another person more than anything, it is one of the most difficult things to realize that you can never have it. Accepting this realization is even more difficult. Loving someone does mean saying goodbye to them in some cases, though we will fight that until the oftentimes bitter end before doing the right thing.

Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in the subway slot-machine? How brutally you spoke when you were angry? How Nature rode you with a busy spur? How you fell on your knees late at night?

Pour on me the tears of the heavensKiss my cheeks with crystal rain Wash away my blemishes and jittersTeach me how to dance in the rain Listen closely and you may hearA sweet fading melody with each drop of rain Pour on me solace and euphoria Take my hand and dance with me.

Love for each other is always there.Open your heart, feel it, it will get better.

The ending of your story all depends on the beginning of ours.

When we think of success, we often associate those who are successful with the things they do rather than the things they don’t, and focus is found in the latter.

There is no time to waste in life and there is no cut and paste as well, only copy and paste – you can only emulate others

Perhaps the price of comfort is that life passes more rapidly. But for anyone who has lived in uneasiness, even for a short, memorable duration, it's a trade-off that will gladly be made.

Your age reflects or measures the rate at which you have been spending life. Every one born into this world is given life and that life is measured in units of time. Spending time means spending life, wasting time means wasting life. Getting value out of time means, getting value out of life. Time does not stop moving because we stopped working with purpose, meaning life does not stop or take a break even when you plan to go on vacation. You never stop spending time, even when you don’t have a penny in your pocket.

Love. And again, see I don't mean, I think love is that condition in the human spirit so profund, that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy which keeps the stars in the firmament, I'm not sure. It may be the energy which keeps the blood running smoothly through our veins. I'm not sure, but it's something beyond the explanation. It can be used for anything you can explain. Any good thing you can explain.

Wasted tries, The many whys, Is it the soul of Compromise? Lows and highs, Believing in lies, In life we have to improvise. Frustration and cries, The last leg of sighs, You are the dreamer in disguise! To the guilt say goodbyes, Open your eyes, Your soul - I do so recognize.

What's the most offensive is not their lying- one can always forgive lying- lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth- what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying....

To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect.

She liked being reminded of butterflies. She remembered being six or seven and crying over the fates of the butterflies in her yard after learning that they lived for only a few days. Her mother had comforted her and told her not to be sad for the butterflies, that just because their lives were short didn't mean they were tragic. Watching them flying in the warm sun among the daisies in their garden, her mother had said to her, see, they have a beautiful life. Alice liked remembering that.

If you could understand impermanence deeply, you would develop more equanimity. You would not get too excited about either the ups and downs of life.

True love is very silent, very personal, very non-demanding, and nonjudgmental.

Life is a treasure-chest of opportunities, choices, and time. Unfortunately, the choice many people make is to argue about the details of the chest instead of seizing the treasure within it.

He weighs the volume in his hand; this one has been the center of the whirlwind. Then DRUMMOND notices the Bible on the JUDGE's bench. He picks up the Bible in his other hand; he looks from one volume to the other, balancing them thoughtfully, as if his hands were scales. He half-smiles, half-shrugs. Then DRUMMOND slaps the two books together and jams them in his brief case, side by side. Slowly, he climbs to the street level and crosses the empty square.

But what if hope had a threshold? What if there was a limit to it? What if each of us was only given a certain amount and mine was used up?

That’s the thing about living on the earth – we humans can make all sorts of decisions and plans, but at the end of the day, the earth always gets the last word.

One of the most healing things you can do is recognize where in your life you are your own poison.

Although it is easy to imagine happiness as the upwards turn on this haphazard rising and falling of emotion which is life, but really it is a foundation of strength of character and inner balance that precipitates peace, a foundation that is slowly built or slowly chipped away. There are times when it may seem that the foundation of happiness is broken, but as the dust settles and the debris is cleared away, we find that the storm has only covered it, still leaving everything we have built in place. True happiness is forged in the furnace of perseverance, fortitude, hope and love. It is not burned or broken by the heat, rather it is made unbreakable—it becomes eternal. Life is the fuel for this purifying fire.

The most important expression of love is self-love – it should precede loving others.

The worldly life is not the trouble, the ‘wrong belief’ is the trouble [oopadhi]. What happens when you believe that which is not yours, as being yours? You will be in trouble.