Whatever you want to be, start to develop that pattern now. You can instill any trend in your consciousness right now… then your actions and whole being will obey that thought.

Look at this very Moment. / This Moment is your true face. / In this Moment there is no past or future. / In this Moment see what is eternal. / In this Moment what effort can you possibly / make in order to be in this Moment?

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

And God said “Love Your Enemy,” and I obeyed him and loved myself.

There is hope in men, not in society, not in systems, not in organized religious systems, but in you and me.

It is not a matter of what you study, but a matter of seeing “things as it is,” and accepting “things as it is.”

These earthly relationships are transitory. Today they seem to be the be all and end all of life, and tomorrow they vanish. Your real tie is with God.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction and therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction.

The more you think and talk, / The more you lose the Way. / Cut off all thinking / And pass freely anywhere.

Do not suffer through chasing after the world in its ways, but attain peace by running along the straight path to the Heart.

Love is the undisturbed balance that binds the universe together.

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind: it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind.

No practice, no realization, is the true principle—things as they really are.

Life itself is the Supreme Guru; be attentive to its lessons and obedient to its commands.

Not to know certain things is a great part of wisdom.

The light of the world that comes and goes, it is unstable. The Light that is eternal can never be extinguished.

Know glory, understand misfortune, become the Valley of the World. To be the Valley of the World is to know unchanging virtue. It means returning to simplicity.

The shortest answer is doing.

The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

A thief entered the house of a Sufi and found nothing there to steal. As he was leaving, the dervish, sensing his disappointment, through him the blanket on which he had been lying.

If you risk failure, then you also risk success.

It’s been my experience that people who make proclamations about themselves are usually the opposite of what they claim to be.

An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way this sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any signs of…

Life will do everything it can to get your attention.

Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane.

Heartbreak and hope are not mutually exclusive. We can be angry and sad and filled with longing for something we cannot have, and simultaneously we can be grateful for what we’ve got—aware, for reasons we’d never choose, of what really matters and what doesn’t.

What arises when I welcome the twists and turns of my path? I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great….