You try your damnedest, but something always goes wrong. That’s life. If you’re smart, you plan for it.

Love can’t be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can’t be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved.

If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today.

My advice is, do not try to inhabit another’s soul. You have your own.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

Give it all up, the pain, the hurt, the anger, and make room for lovely things to rush in and fill you full.

The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, but no dust is stirred.

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.

Nothing is more fragile than subtlety.

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

There’s no way of perceiving the world that doesn’t involve carving it conceptually into pieces.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. they always say, “Do it again”; and the grown up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is…

Wisdom without knowledge, wisdom without data, is just a hunch.

My motto has always been: “Always merry and bright.” Perhaps that is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: “For all your ills I give you laughter.” As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies…

The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually…

Little by little, one travels far.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture.

Let me respectfully remind you / Life and death are of supreme importance / Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost / Each of us should strive to awaken / Awaken. Take heed. Do not squander your life.

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

Each day the first day: each day a life. Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and to give back. It must be held out empty—for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.

You do not just wake up and become the butterfly.

Talent isn’t genius and no amount of energy can make it so.

Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.

What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see. You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see or acquire it. It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize…

A great silent space holds all of nature in its embrace. It also holds you.

It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.