Of the millions, I too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living --a set of values.Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

According to conviction, I am not simply what I am doing now. I am also what I have done, and my conventionally edited version of my past is made to seem almost more the "real me" than what I am at this moment. For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final. It is the firm basis for predictions of what I will be in the future, and so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is!Alan B. Watts, The Way of Zen

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, its always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

...each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden - forbidden for him. It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa. Actually it's only a question of convenience. Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must stand on his own feet. Hermann Hesse, Demian

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.Stephen King, The Tommyknockers

...social intercourse with its requirements and its indulgence, -its hypocrisy, to call it by name, -is highly productive of thought-hindering insincerity.Ernest Dimnet, The Art of Thinking

I begin to see what is there without continuously labelling the events with the colours of my judgements and values... I see the way someone behaves and do not feel that it is either bad or good. That desire had melted away by feelings of respect for the other's independence. He or she is not there anyway to suit or to satisfy my view of the world.Rollo May, Zen in the Art of Helping

We're a goin' there ain't we? None of this here talk gonna keep us from goin' there. When we get there, we'll get there. When we get a job we'll work, an' when we don't get a job we'll set on our tail. This here talk ain't gonna do no good no way.John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

...nobody has the right to manipulate anybody or to impress anybody with his stronger personality, not even for the other's imagined good, for nobody can know what that good is. This is courtesy rather than callousness, for the other's dignity is thus acknowledged, or the dignity of his grief is respected. If and when he is ready, the other will of himself reach out for consolation and feel free to ask for a hand to point out the way.Irmgard Schloegl, The Wisdom of the Zen Masters

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use,
He who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions.
He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion: Let nature take its course.
By letting each thing act in accordance with its own nature, everything that needs to be done gets done.Lao Tzu, Tao Teh King

The wirless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.Albert Einstein

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.Emerson

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.Bertrand Russell

One man's eccentricity is another man's acceptable variation.David Weeks and Jamie James, Eccentrics

In a rare display or technological heraldry, the insignia of the American Physical Society depicts the three fundemental units on which all of physics is based: time (symbolized by a pendulum); length (symbolized by a ruler); and mass (symbolized by a brass weight). Ironically, relativity has taught us that none of these standards of physical measurements remains constant when viewed from a moving reference frame.Nick Herbert, Faster Than Light

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence

Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

And we discovered the obvious: that all knowledge is interrelated, that a single interest if pursued eagerly and thoroughly leads inevitably to the whole interconnected network of basic skills and knowledge.Howard S. Rowland, No More School

We make our own lives wherever we areL.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheefully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait...
And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

One who is too insistent on his own views finds few to agree with him.Lao Tzu, Tao Teh King

The truth, of course, is that a billion falsehoods told a billion times by a billion people are still false. Travis Walton, Fire in the Sky

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you... Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try is as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use. Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan

Those who don't know the mistakes of the past won't be able to enjoy it when they make them again in the future.Diane Duane, Doctor's Orders

...and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It's impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural. Philip Jose Farmer, Dayworld

I answered that one learns to live, not by hearing of other lives, but by living; for words are infinitely less important than acts. A. S. Neill, Summerhill

Rules only make sense if they are both kept and broken. Breaking the rule is one way of observing it. Thomas Moore, Meditations

Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes no use of thinking, honoring it's value and it's power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thought as thought rather than getting caught up in them as reality. Jon Kabit-Zinn, Wherever you Go There You Are

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; And shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets his heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, the he is automatically involved in fear of losing his status.Lao Tzu, Tao Teh King

Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty of reality. Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist

What you're supposed to do when you like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession... Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

The funny thing about stopping is that as soon as you do it, here you are. Jon Kabit-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are

We feel the urge to tell the truth as we see it. But we should try to accomplish this without judgemental condemnations that hurt others. Again, when we remember that what we perceive in another is a reflection of ourselves, we become less judgemental. So when we freely express harsh judgement of another, we are in effect talking about those aspects of ourselves that trouble us the most. Shirley MacLaine, Going Within

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible.Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

It is immediately apparent... that this sense-world, this seemingly real external universe, though it may be useful and valid in other respects, cannot be the external world, but only the self's projected picture of it... the evidence of the senses cannot be accepted as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality. E. Underhill, Mysticism

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Without going out-of-doors, one can know all he needs to know. Without even looking out of his window, one can grasp the nature of everything. Without going beyond his own nature, one can achieve ultimate wisdom. Therefore, the intelligent man knows all he needs to know without going away, And sees all he needs to see without looking elsewhere, And does all he needs to do wihout undue exertion. Lao Tzu, Tao Teh King

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

But feeling is so different from knowing. My common sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

The mere act of observing something changes the nature of the thing observed.Werner Hiesenberg

What each must seek in his own life never was on land or sea. It is something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.Joseph Campbell

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