All we have of freedom -- all we use or know --
This our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.
-- Kipling
Photo by lorenzodom
All We Have of Freedom
Our Place in the World
A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.
-- Edward Chapin
Photo by mrtambourine
Elimination of Nonessentials
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
-- Lin Yutang
Photo by toby0pico
The Inner Whisper
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Photo by h.koppdelaney
The Source of Your Joy
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
Photo by Dey
The Most Difficult Task of All
For one human being to love another:
that is perhaps the most difficult task of all…
the work for which all other work is but a preparation.
It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen…
a great exacting claim upon us, something
that chooses us out and calls us to great things.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Photo by Santokh Singh
What Makes You Come Alive
Don’t worry about what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive and do that.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
-- Robert Thurman
Photo by Thaozilla
We All Have the Jungle Inside of Us
It's just human. We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants and needs and desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about it, we're all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies. it's like a kind of poetry.
-- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Mister Sandman, 1994
Photo by KikkaSuperstar
As Wise As the Day I Was Born
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Photo by Deniz ŞENSOY
It is Time for Me to Go, Mother
It is time for me to go, mother; I am going.
When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn you stretch out your arms for your baby in the bed, I shall say, “Baby is not there!”- Mother, I am going.
I shall become a delicate drought of air and caress you; and I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe, and kiss you and kiss you again.
In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves you will hear my whisper in your bed, and my laughter will flash with the lightning through the open window into your room.
If you lie awake, thinking of your baby till late into the night, I shall sing to you from the stars, “Sleep, mother, sleep.”
On the straying moonbeams I shall steal over your bed, and lie upon your blossom while you sleep.
I shall become a dream, and through the little opening of your eyelids I shall slip into the depths of your sleep: and when you wake up and look round startled, like a twinkling firefly I shall flit out into the darkness.
When, on the great festival of puja, the neighbors’ children come and play about the house, I shall melt into the music of the flute and throb in your heart all day.
Dear auntie will come with puja presents and will ask, “Where is our baby, sister?” Mother, you will tell her softly, “He is in the pupils of my eyes, he is in my body and my soul.”
-- Rabindranath Tagore, The End
Photo by carf
Our True Home is in the Present Moment
Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. Peace is all around us -- in the world and in nature -- and within us -- in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice. We need only to find ways to bring our body and mind back to the present moment so we can touch what is refreshing, healing, and wondrous.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Touching Peace
Photo by kepje
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