ClearlyChosen's Quotations

We first make our habits, then our habits make us.

Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

You don't have to start with the perfect topic. You just have to start.

Beware what you think for they become your words. Beware what you say for they become your actions. Beware your actions as they become your habits. Beware your habits as they seal your fate.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.

When the mind is conflicted, the path is indecipherable.

When you recognize my insights, they become your insights... When you recognize wisdom, wherever or however that happens for you, it is your wisdom that is being reflected back to you.

The pain is inevitable, but the misery is optional.

The remedy for suffering is not to inflict more suffering.

If you hate those who hate you, you become like them.

Joy, sorrow, care, courage, and tenderness are real. Kindness is real. Tears are real, and so is laughter. These are the currency of the heart.
They are meant to be exchanged.

In our dark hours, we tend to ponder.
And what we ponder, determines what comes after.

.. you can determine in the winter what will be born in the summer.

There are many things I know, that I don't know I know.

Just as the night is darkest,
the seed of Light is already awakening.

True luxury of a gift is not just in the receiving but also in having the means and ability to give.

Thoughts of a passing man could change your life.

God's blessings come in disguises. They keep coming nonetheless. Appreciation is in the art of recognition

You cannot grow spiritually and remain the same.

When you strive for balance, be gentle with yourself. How can you recognize balance without recognizing imbalance?

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature,
but only in contradiction to that which is known to us in nature.

I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research.

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

Though it has no thought of keeping watch, it's not for naught that the scarecrow stands in the grain field.

Gaining enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon doesn't get wet; the water isn't broken. Although its light is broad and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the whole sky are reflected in one dew-drop on the grass.

To live in fear and falsehood is worse than death.

Those in a hurry do not arrive.

No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

Before enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water; after enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water.

Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred! For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.

I neither follow the Way nor depart from it. I neither worship the Buddha nor have contempt for him. I neither sit long hours in meditation nor sit idle. I neither eat just one meal a day nor am I greedy for more. I desire nothing, and that is what I call the Way.

As is the atom, so is the universe.

Life is more accurately measured by the lives you touch than by the things you acquire.

Man's happiness in life is the result of man's own effort and is neither the gift of God nor a spontaneous natural product.

Enlightenment, or true happiness, is not a transcendental state. It is a condition of broad wisdom, boundless energy, and good fortune wherein we each shape our own destiny, find fulfillment in daily activities, and come to understand our ultimate purpose in life.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I know of no more encouraging fact then the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

He who knows he has enough is rich.

He who grasps loses.

A good traveler leaves no track.

There are two ways of avoiding war:
One is to satisfy everyone's desire,
the other, to content oneself with the good.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Let a Christian follow the precepts of his faith, let a Hindu and a Jew follow theirs. If they strive long enough, they will ultimately discover God, who runs like a seam under the crusts of rituals and forms.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

The ultimate standpoint of Zen … is that we have been led astray through ignorance to find a split in our own being, that there was from the very beginning no need for a struggle between the finite and the infinite, that the peace we are seeking so eagerly has been there all the time.