Quotes that Inspire Me and Will Resonate with You
I find the following quotes deeply inspiring. Some are famous quotes you have no doubt seen before while others are from not so famous people. May you enjoy them as much as I do!
A bell is not a bell till you ring it. A song is not a song till you sing it. Love is not put in your heart to stay. Love is not love till you give it away.
– Oscar Hammerstein
If you think you are so enlightened go and spend a week with your parents.
– Ram Dass
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
– Hamlet, William Shakespeare
There is a “…grotesque contradiction between what people consider to be my achievements and abilities and the reality of who I am and what I am capable of.”
– A New Earth. Original source: Mein Weltbild by Albert Einstein. Translation by Eckart Tolle
Archimedes said: ‘Give me a fulcrum and with a lever I will move the world.’ What he could not get, the saints have been given. The Almighty has given them a fulcrum: Himself, Himself alone. For a lever they have that prayer which burns with the fire of love. Thus they have moved the world, and it is with this lever that those still battling in the world move it and will go on moving it till the end of time.”
– St. Therese of Lisieux
Where you fall, there your God pushed you.
– Nigerian proverb
The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.
– Zen saying
Who you are is a result of what you have thought.
– Buddha
Imagination is everything. It is a preview of life’s coming attractions.
– Einstein
The works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater works than these shall ye do.
– Jesus
If ye have the faith as a grain of mustard seed (and that faith becomes knowing), ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place,’ and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
– Jesus
…when you reach mastery, you allow others to experience Who They are through you. This is how you will know a Master when you see one: the Master is one who sees you. The Master gives you back to your Self, for the Master recognizes you. That is, the Master re-cognizes you–knows you again. And thus do you once again re-cognize your Self. You know your Self, again, as Who You Really Are. Then you pass this on to others. You have become a Master, and no longer seek to know your Self through others, but choose to have others know themselves through you. Thus have I said, a true Master is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most Masters.
– Friendship with God by Neale Donald Walsh, pp. 164-165
A Prayer Thought…many remain at the foot of the mount who could ascend to the top…I repeat and ask that you always have courageous thoughts. As a result of them, God will give you grace for courageous deeds.
– St. Teresa of Avila
If you are afraid of failure, get over it. Everybody fails.
– Steven T. Bigari
About tackling big problems Mr. Bigari tells the story of a beach covered with starfish. “A boy is throwing them back in the ocean, one by one, when a man comes by and says: ‘What are you doing? You can’t possibly make a difference here.’ Without looking up or pausing, the boy picks up another starfish, tosses it in the ocean and says, ‘Did for that one.’”
– Micheal Fitzgerald reporting in the NY Times 2/4/07 on Steven T. Bigari
Don’t keep searching for the truth, just let go of your opinions.
– Buddha
…we are the canvas, as well as the images upon the canvas. We are the paints, as well as the brushes…You are the seed of the miracle, as well as the miracle itself.
– Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix
Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
– Ernest Holmes, founder of Science of Mind
Remember that your children are not your own, but are lent to you by the Creator.
– Mohawk
Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.
– Lumbee
Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living the life the Creator intended for you.
– Hopi
A rocky vineyard does not need a prayer but a pickax.
– Navajo
There can never be peace between nations until it is first known that true peace is within the souls of men.
– Oglala Sioux
Obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness.
– Socrates
words are but symbols of symbols (and)…are thus twice removed from reality
– A Course in Miracles (M-21.1:9-10)
As Above, So Below
– Emerald Tablet, Hermes Trismegistus
Why separate you spiritual life and your practical life? To an integral being, there is no such distinction.
– Lao Tzu
Only from the heart can you reach the sky
– Rumi
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
– William James
You can’t control things, you can only postpone the inevitable.
– Danielle Joseph
The fruit of silence is prayer, The fruit of prayer is faith, The fruit of faith is love, The fruit of love is service, The fruit of service is peace.
– Mother Teresa
Remember-works of love are works of peace.
-Mother Teresa
It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.
– Hippocrates 460-377 BC
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
– Thomas A. Edison 1847-1931
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.
– Voltaire 1694-1778
A Drop Of Wisdom Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
– Marianne Williamson.
In essence, doubt gives you time for your brain to catch up with your soul. It is an important, significant part of the faith process.
– Dr. Adele Ryan McDowell, Ph.D.
The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love
– A Course in Miracles (T-25.IX.6:1)
Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
– The Unesco (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) motto
We’re not here to take, we weren’t born to indulge, we were born to kneel.
– T.S. Elliot
Listen my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this ‘someday’ is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection, No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all suckilngs have death within them, all dying people –eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahmin. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good-death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfect, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it. These, Govinda are some of the thoughts that are in my mind.
– Herman Hess, Siddhartha 1951, p116
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.
– Amit Goswami from The Self-Aware Universe
The will of God will never take you where the grace of God cannot protect you.
– Unknown
Do not prepare the path for the child. Prepare the child for the path and he will find his way.
– Unknown, Native American
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside all people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.
“One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
“The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love hope, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.”
– Unknown
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When Jesus encountered a man who was blind from birth, his disciples asked, “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he be born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
– John 9:1-3, King James version
Learn that eternity is now, the future is now. There is no past or present or future as separate periods of time-all is within the soul’s embrace now. It is your reaction to the now which is your future. Never look into the future and anticipate this, that or the other, for to do so is to live in fear. Live today with God, and your future can hold nothing but joy.
– White Eagle
The end is inherent in the means.
– Gandhi
We as a human race have confused cleverness with consciousness.
– Martha Hamilton Snyder
You are the dream of peace longing to be.
You Were Born for Such a Time as This
– James O’Dea, The Mystery of 2012
Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
– Hopi Elders
The day will day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
– Teihard de Chardin
And I saw the river Over which every soul must pass To reach the kingdom of heaven And the name of the river was suffering And I saw the boat Which carries souls across the river And the name of that boat was Love.
– Saint John of the Cross
Always be. Never try to become. You can be anything you want, just don’t work at becoming. Remember to be it.
– John Perkins, The World is as You Dream It
He lives in wisdom who sees himself in all and all in him. He is forever free who has broken out of the ego cage of I and mine.
– Bhagavad Gita (as presented in John Perkins, The World is as You Dream It)
…recent scientific evidence that every atom in our bodies dates back to the Big Bang, the time some fifteen billion years ago when the earth was created, and that no atom remains in any single body for much more than a year. We truly are all one…And we have participated in many lives.
– John Perkins, The World is as You Dream It
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth…I heard a voice saying there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, for the former things are passed away.
– The Essene Book of Revelations
Someone sent a band to my house, At five in the morning. I took it as a sign God wanted me to sing!
– Hafiz (Persian Poet 1320-1389)
We should make all spiritual talk Simple today: God is trying to sell you something, But you don’t want to buy. That is what your suffering is: your fantastic haggling, Your manic screaming over the price!
– Hafiz (Persian 1320-1389)
There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge; no wall that enough love will not throw down; no sin that enough love will not redeem…it makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble; how hopeless the outlook; how muddled the tangle; how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.
– Emmet Fox
Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they do when they stick together.
– Verna M. Kelly
Getting through life is like “a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.”
– E.M. Forester, A Room With a View
Life loves to be taken by the lapels and told: ‘I am with you kid. Let’s go.
– Maya Angelou
“Guru literally means ‘remover of darkness, ‘ one who can enlighten you.”…
“If you think of the spiritual path as the road home to your true Self, a teacher is someone standing next to you, pointing and giving directions, while the guru is up the road ahead beckoning to you from your destination. He is someone who has already made the journey and knows the lay of the land. In fact, the guru knows it’s all One, that the journey is an illusion and that it’s all right here, and your being is just another face of the One. The guru’s job is to get you to know that too.”
– Ram Dass, Be Love Now
“In the West people might receive messages from their guru, whom they think of as angel, astral being, or ascended master.
“In the Vedas, the ancient source of Hinduism, there are three ways to acquire spiritual knowledge. The highest is direct personal experience. Next is hearing it directly from someone who knows, which is the transmission for the guru. Last and least is by reading or studying about it…”
– Ram Dass, Be Love Now
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost
Dwell in possibility.
– Emily Dickinson
The difference between what we do and what we’re capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When you understand the concept of the Bhagavad Gita where they say ‘do not reach for the fruits of your actions’ you are already on a royal road to happiness.
– Derek O’Neill
The Lord Spoke: O sinless one, twofold is the path which I have declared of old. The path of Understanding is for the meditative; the path of Action is for the active. No man can attain freedom from action by abstaining from actions, nor can he become adept in understanding by mere casting-off of actions. For no man ever, even for a moment, rest without action; everyone is compelled to do work by the Moods born of Nature.
– Bagavad Gita 1959, Peter Pauper Press, Mt. Vernon, NY
The Lord spoke: When a man forsakes all the desires that dwell in the mind, O son of Pritha, and is gladdened only in his Soul, and by his Soul, then he is said to be of abiding wisdom. He whose mind is undismayed in pain, who is freed from longings for pleasure; from whom passion, fear, and wrath has fled, is a man of steady wisdom, a saintly man, He who is free from all attachments and who, whatever fair or foul fortune may come, neither rejoices in it nor loathes it, has wisdom set in permanence.
– Bagavad Gita 1959, Peter Pauper Press, Mt. Vernon, NY
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.
– Jessica Dovey
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiples hate, violence multiples violence, and toughness multiples toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. … The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
– Martin Luther King Jr
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
– Soren Kierkegaard
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
– Marianne Williamson, A return to Love
Einstein said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.” Iain McGilchrist in: The Divided Brain TED Talk said “We have created a world that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift.”
We can learn about mysticism or we can practice being mystics.
– Cooper, Rabbi David, A. God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism
To understand how prayer works, consider the sun, which shines everywhere without hesitation or hindrance. Like God or Buddha, it continuously radiates all its power, warmth, and light without differentiation. When the earth turns, it appears to us that the sun no longer shines. But that has nothing to do with the sun; it’s due to our own position on the shadow side of the earth. If we inhabit a deep, dark mine shaft, it’s not the sun’s fault that we feel cold. Or if we live on the earth’s surface but keep our eyes closed, it’s not the sun’s fault that we don’t see light. The sun’s blessings are all-pervasive, whether we are open to them or not. Through prayer, we come out of the mine shaft, open our eyes, become receptive to enlightened presence, the omnipotent love and compassion that exist for all beings.
– Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer”
He loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
– St. Augustine
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
– Neale Donald Walsch
Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.
– Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech
If I have seen further, it is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.
– Isaac Newton
Curiosity is life, assumption is death. Look around and be a sponge
– Mark Parker, CEO Nike, former shoe designer now CEO of a $17 billion company. Fast Company called him the world’s most creative CEO.
Don’t speak unless you can improve the silence
– George Will
Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves; don’t accuse the sun of partiality.
– Chinese Proverb
Ships in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
– John A, Shedd
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
– Buddha
You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.
– Buddha
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
– Buddha
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
– Buddha
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
– Buddha
Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
– Buddha
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
– Buddha
Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
– Buddha
Theres has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.
– Buddha
A bell is not a bell till you ring it. A song is not a song till you sing it. Love is not put in your heart to stay. Love is not love till you give it away.
– Oscar Hammerstein
If you think you are so enlightened go and spend a week with your parents.
– Ram Dass
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
– Hamlet, William Shakespeare
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
– George Bernard Shaw
If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.
– Francis of Assisi
Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.
– Cary Grant
One is more likely to awaken through surrender than through seeking to waken. The effort to awaken is the effort of ego, whereas to surrender is to give up all efforts and to place oneself in the hands of a vast force that is more powerful than any realization of non duality.
– Mariana Caplan, Halfway Up the Mountain – The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment
People want illumination…want divine love…but do they want the glory and the agony? Anyone who understands this work knows they will have to go against all the churches, go against all the transcendence selling mysticisms, against the material jamboree of our culture…it’s scary. We can only do this by connecting with the strength of the Mother…to accept the terms of the transformation, to infuse ourselves with the Divine so we can become servants of transformation.
– Andrew Harvey
I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
– Albert Einstein
When a man is wrong and won’t admit it, he always becomes angry.
– Leonardo da Vinci
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
– René Descartes
I maintain that human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patters of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition…we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.
– Sir John C. Eccles
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Jesus set before me the book of nature. I understand how all the flowers God has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understand that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers. So it is in the world of souls, Jesus’ garden. He has created smaller ones and those must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances when He looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.
– St. Terese of Lisieux
In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy.
– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Laureate in Medicine
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
– John Muir
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
– Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
– Jesus from the gospel of Thomas
Quotes
A bell is not a bell till you ring it. A song is not a song till you sing it. Love is not put in your heart to stay. Love is not love till you give it away.
– Oscar Hammerstein
If you think you are so enlightened go and spend a week with your parents.
– Ram Dass
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
– Hamlet, William Shakespeare
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
– Nelson Mandela
Be in the world, not of it.
– Jesus
Everyday Mystic is a toolbox with tools crafted out of love.
– Linda Fallo-Mitchell
There is a “…grotesque contradiction between what people consider to be my achievements and abilities and the reality of who I am and what I am capable of.”
– A New Earth. Original source: Mein Weltbild by Albert Einstein. Translation by Eckart Tolle
Archimedes said: ‘Give me a fulcrum and with a lever I will move the world.’ What he could not get, the saints have been given. The Almighty has given them a fulcrum: Himself, Himself alone. For a lever they have that prayer which burns with the fire of love. Thus they have moved the world, and it is with this lever that those still battling in the world move it and will go on moving it till the end of time.”
– St. Therese of Lisieux
Where you fall, there your God pushed you.
– Nigerian proverb
The works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater works than these shall ye do.
– Jesus
If ye have the faith as a grain of mustard seed (and that faith becomes knowing), ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place,’ and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
– Jesus
…when you reach mastery, you allow others to experience Who They are through you. This is how you will know a Master when you see one: the Master is one who sees you. The Master gives you back to your Self, for the Master recognizes you. That is, the Master re-cognizes you–knows you again. And thus do you once again re-cognize your Self. You know your Self, again, as Who You Really Are. Then you pass this on to others. You have become a Master, and no longer seek to know your Self through others, but choose to have others know themselves through you. Thus have I said, a true Master is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most Masters.
– Friendship with God by Neale Donald Walsh, pp. 164-165
A Prayer Thought…many remain at the foot of the mount who could ascend to the top…I repeat and ask that you always have courageous thoughts. As a result of them, God will give you grace for courageous deeds.
– St. Teresa of Avila
If you are afraid of failure, get over it. Everybody fails.
– Steven T. Bigari
About tackling big problems Mr. Bigari tells the story of a beach covered with starfish. “A boy is throwing them back in the ocean, one by one, when a man comes by and says: ‘What are you doing? You can’t possibly make a difference here.’ Without looking up or pausing, the boy picks up another starfish, tosses it in the ocean and says, ‘Did for that one.’”
– Micheal Fitzgerald reporting in the NY Times 2/4/07 on Steven T. Bigari