Quotes / Sayings

This great river that flows from the mountains to the see. I am that river and the river is me...
Maori Saying

Sitting quietly, doing nothing; Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Zenrin Kushû

Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are just mountains and waters are just waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen, mountains to him are no longer just mountains and waters are no longer just waters; but after this when he really attains enlightenment, mountains are once more mountains and waters are once more waters...

The Way of Zen

The ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.

Zen Master Sêng-chao

Like the clear stillness of autumn water—pure and without activity; in its tranquil depths are no obstructions. Such a one is called a man of Tao, also, a man who has nothing further to do.

Wei-shan Ling-yu

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.

The Buddha

Teachers (books) open the door... You enter by yourself.

Chinese Proverb

If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Nietzsche.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Tao Te Ching.

If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.

Martin Luther

To be a man of knowledge one needs to be light and fluid.

Yaqui Mystic

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Zen saying.

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God:

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Water which is too pure has no fish.

Ts'ai Ken T'An.

To set up what you like against what you dislike -- this is the disease of the mind.

Seng-T'San.

It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.

Thoreau

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still...

Joseph Conrad

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Goethe

Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.

Socrates

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the old; seek what they sought.

Basho

Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.

Friedrich von Schiller

Whoever knows himself knows God.

Muhammad

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Kahlil Gibran.

The aim of life is to live and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Henry Miller

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

Dogen

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

Albert Einstein

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.

St. John of the Cross

Lovely snowflakes, they fall nowhere else!

Zen Saying

It is good to have an end to journey toward;

but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Everything the same; everything distinct.

Zen Proverb

When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough.

When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much.

Fen-Yang

Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplify, simplify.

Thoreau

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

G.K. Chesterton.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

John Lennon

Men argue, nature acts.

Voltaire