Every time we become aware of a thought, as opposed to being lost in a thought, we experience that opening of the mind.

Virtue protects him who protects her.

Everyone is my teacher. Some I seek. Some I subconsciously attract. Often I learn by observing others. Some may be completely unaware that I’m observing them, yet I bow deeply with gratitude.

There are many ways to come back to the here and the now, to touch life deeply. But they all involve mindful breathing. If we’re anchored in our mindful breathing, we can practice anytime.

Let no one think that he has learned all, because there is no end to learning.

Leave the familiar for a while. / Let your senses and bodies stretch out / Like a welcomed season / Onto the meadow and shores and hills.

We forget that nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness. We forget that each one of us in his personal life repeats that miracle.

Life is a winking light in the darkness.

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is to be present in the present. Gratefully.

Even though a person is not ready to practice it, the ideal of non resistance of evil should always be held in sight.

Whenever you have truth, it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.

Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

All truth is comprised in music and mathematics.

I think by and large a third of people are villains, a third are cowards, and a third are heroes. Now, a villain and a coward can choose to be a hero, but they’ve got to make that choice.

Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Be calm and strong and patient. Meet failure and disappointment with courage. Rise superior to the trials of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. In danger, in adversity, cling to your principles and ideals. Aequanimitas!

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

“People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.”

“I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learning, patterns of behavior, and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what’s right in front of us because that is often what is most visible.”

“British occultist Aleister Crowley famously called magic kingdom (to which he added a “k” to distinguish it from stagecraft) “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.”

“Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.”

“All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.”

“History never repeats itself; man always does.”

“It is necessary for the perfection of human society, that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.”

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”