SPIRIT
When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion. (Abraham Lincoln)
If love is the answer, could
you please rephrase the question? (Lily Tomlin)
It is said an Eastern
monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view,
and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They
presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it
expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of
affliction! (Abraham Lincoln)
I know that there are people
who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that! (Tom Lehrer)
Before God we are all
equally wise and equally foolish. (Albert Einstein)
Enthusiasm-from the
Greek-meaning “filled with God.”
In the name of God, stop a
moment, cease your work, look around you. (Leo Tolstoy)
I like trees because they
seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. (Willa
Cather)
The smaller the mind the
greater the conceit. (Aesop)
My religion is very
simple…my religion is kindness. (Dalai Lama)
Music is my religion. (Jimi
Hendrix)
You can safely assume that
you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the
same people you do. (Anne Lamott)
Let a bird sing without
deciphering the song. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
You can’t pray a lie. (Mark
Twain)
Nonviolence means avoiding
not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You
not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. (Martin Luther King
Jr.)
Laughter is an instant
vacation. (Milton Berle)
Man is the only animal that
has the true religion…several of them. (Mark Twain)
I put a dollar in one of
those change machines. Nothing changed. (George Carlin)
We say that if a temple, or
a symbol, or an image helps you to realize the divine within, you are welcome
to it. Have two hundred images if you like. If certain forms and formulas help
you to realize the divine…have, by all means, whatever forms, temples, whatever
ceremonies you want to bring you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them:
the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward; you are going backward
toward the brutes. (Swami Vivekananda)
Man was made at the end of
the week’s work when God was tired. (Mark Twain)
How many legs does a dog
have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a
leg. (Abraham Lincoln)
I believe in God only I
spell it Nature. (Frank Lloyd Wright)
He who would travel happily
must travel light. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
The future belongs to those
who believe in the beauty of their dreams. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
The universal brotherhood of
man is our most precious possession, what there is of it. (Mark Twain)
Speak your mind even if your
voice shakes. (Maggie Kuhn)
The best mind-altering drug
is truth. (Lily Tomlin)
If the stars appeared only
one night every thousand years, how we would marvel and appreciate them. (Ralph
Waldo Emerson)
A patient complaining of
melancholy consulted Dr. John Abernathy. After an examination the doctor
pronounced, “You need amusement. Go and hear the comedian Grimaldi; he will
make you laugh, and that will be better for you than any drugs.” Said the
patient, “I am Grimaldi.” (Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes)
Live to the point of tears.
(Albert Camus)
I thought I could change the
world. It took me a hundred years to figure out I can’t change the world. I can
only change Bessie. And, honey, that ain’t easy either. (Annie Elizabeth
“Bessie” Delany, at 104)
Life is what happens to you
while you’re busy making other plans. (John Lennon)
Truth, like gold, is to be
obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
(Leo Tolstoy)
All men speak in bitter
disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly. (Mark
Twain)
Until I was thirteen, I
thought my name was SHUT UP. (Joe
Namath)
Maybe this world is another
planet’s hell. (Aldous Huxley)
Look deep into nature, and
then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
The trouble with trouble is,
it starts out as fun. (Naomi Judd)
Our lives teach us who we
are. (Salman Rushdie)
Love thy neighbor, even when
he plays the trombone. (Jewish proverb)
Don’t let other people tell
you what you want. (Pat Riley)
A closed mind is a dying
mind. (Edna Ferber)
I have an existential map.
It has ‘You Are Here’ written all over it. (Steven Wright)
Love until it hurts. (Mother
Theresa)
I always saw better when my
eyes were closed. (Tom Waits)
I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning how to sail my ship. (Louisa May Alcott)
If I only had a little
humility, I’d be perfect. (Ted Turner)
The search for truth is but
the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. Truth is. It
can neither be lost nor sought nor found. It is there, wherever you are, being
within you. Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized. (A Course in Miracles)
The winds of grace are
blowing all the time. You have only to raise your sail. (Ramakrishna)
We have just enough religion
to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. (Jonathan Swift)
The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart. (Dhammapada)
I’m a secretary. On a good
day I type ninety-five words per minute; on a bad day I show up drunk in my
pajamas. (Mary Beth Cowan)
Some cause happiness
wherever they go; others, whenever they go. (Oscar Wilde)
The trouble with being in
the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. (Lily Tomlin)
Life is a rock. And a hard
place. (Juli Duncan)
The unhappy derive comfort
from the misfortune of others. (Aesop)
Anna was saying to herself:
why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do?
It’s childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I’m scared of being
alone in what I feel. (Doris Lessing-The Golden Notebook)
No snowflake ever falls in
the wrong place. (Zen saying)
Conscious faith is freedom.
Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness. (G.I. Gurdjieff)
At
Duke University, there were four sophomores taking chemistry and all of them
had an "A" so far. These four friends were so confident that the
weekend before finals they decided to visit some friends and have a big party.
They had a great time, but after all the hearty partying, they slept all day
Sunday and didn't make it back to Duke until late Monday morning.
Rather than taking the final then, they
decided that after the final they would explain to their professor why they
missed it. They said that they visited friends but on the way back they had a
flat tire. As a result, they missed the final.
The professor agreed they could make up the
final the next day.
The guys were relieved. They studied that night for the exam. The professor
placed them in separate rooms and gave them a test booklet. They quickly
answered the first problem worth 5 points. Cool!!....they thought!
Each one in a separate room, thinking this was going to be easy....then
they turned the page.
On the second page was written...
For 95 points: Which tire?
O my soul, do not aspire to
immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible. (Pinder)
Prayer
is not the moment when God and humans are in relationship, for that is always.
Prayer is taking initiative to intentionally respond to God’s presence. (L.
Robert Keck)
Not
all those who wander are lost. (J.R.R. Tolkien)
It
is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much. (Bernard de Fontenelle)
(To
an audience) “All you who believe in telekinesis…please raise my hand.” (Kurt
Vonnegut)
The
summation of all things is not God; it is man’s limited perception of God. (Ron
Anjard)
The
moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes
a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. (Henry
Miller)
Truth
is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught. (R. Buckminster Fuller)
Gentle
and giving…all the rest is treason. (Kenneth Patchen)
Some
things have to be believed to be seen. (Ralph Hodgson)
All
paths are the same: they lead nowhere…They are paths going through the bush, or
into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths but
I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. Does this path
have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.
Both paths lead nowhere; but one has heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a
joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will
make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you. (Carlos
Castaneda)
A
dishonest man never trusts anyone. (T. Jefferson Parker)
Wherever
you go, the sky is the same color. (Persian Saying)
You
don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are. (Talmud)
Say
not, “I have found the truth,” rather, “I have found a truth.” (Kahlil Gibran)
Sometimes
I lie awake at night, and ask, “Where have I gone wrong?” Then a voice says to
me, “This is going to take more than one night.” (Charlie Brown in Charles
Schulz’s “Peanuts”)
Today
I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what
is kind than I am of what is true. (Robert Brault)
If
you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it. (Bill Cosby)
Once
upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor’s son. The boy
walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his ax while
digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor’s son, the boy
walked, looked, and spoke like any other child. (Lao-tzu)
He
who likes cherries soon learns to climb. (German proverb)
It
takes a long time to become young. (Pablo Picasso)
If
you can’t say something nice; don’t say nothin’ at all. (Thumper’s mom in “Bambi”)
Be
humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars. (Serbian
Proverb)
Instant
gratification takes too long. (Carrie Fisher)
If
you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
There
are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the
way and not starting. (Buddha)
Maybe
the saddest thing in life is what you never get to say. Or maybe it’s that you
don’t know how to say it. (Al Green)
It’s
so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say
it. (Sam Levenson)
Map
out your future, but do it in pencil. (Jon Bon Jovi)
Bidden
or not bidden, God is present. (Carl Jung)
The
traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
I
cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. (Friedrich
Nietzsche)
Why
is it when we talk to God, we’re said to be praying…but when God talks to us,
we’re schizophrenic? (Lily Tomlin)
He
who builds to every man’s advice will have a crooked house. (Danish proverb)
To
know when you have enough is to be rich. (Lao-Tzu)
The
Creator is a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. (H.L. Mencken)
The
statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from
some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay,
then it’s you. (Rita Mae Brown)
The
secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to
have the two as close together as possible. (George Burns)
A Cherokee elder was
teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight is going on
inside me…it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear,
anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment,
inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.
The other stands for joy,
peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence,
friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.
This same fight is going on
inside you, and inside every other person, too.”
The children thought about
it for a minute, and then one asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee
replied…”The one you feed.”
In the Baemba tribe of South
Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the
center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man,
woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused
individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time,
about all the good things the person has done in his lifetime. All his positive
attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at
length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal
circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically
and literally welcomed back into the tribe. (Alice Walker)
If you tell the truth you
don’t have to remember anything. (Mark Twain)
Of course there is no
formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and
what it brings. (Arthur Rubinstein)