It's no longer possible for anyone to remain unaware of the global transformation we are experiencing. Global consciousness is undergoing a total revolution - a reharmonization of our priorities as a species. Our individual keynotes are forming a new chord. At the center of this shift is the development of the skill of listening. Not just listening as in hearing sounds, but also inner listening - awareness of emotions, feelings, thoughts, and all the events of the inner life of each of us individually and all of us together. --David Gordon (in Untitled)

A student approached his spiritual teacher, bowed in respect and asked: "What is the secret of life?" The teacher replied, "Good judgement." The student bowed again and asked, "How do you get good judgement?" The teacher said, "Experience." The student bowed one more time and queried, "And how does one get experience?" The teacher replied, "Bad judgement!" --Teaching from Vajra tradition (in Untitled)

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit. --Dawna Markova (in Untitled)

If we had keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. --George Eliot (in Blind Leading the Blind)

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. --Mark Twain (in Untitled)

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is a superstition. It does not exist in nature --Helen Keller (in Untitled)

I'm a pilgrim of life, so from that point of view, I'm on a pilgrimage every day. Once one lives as a pilgrim, one lives lightly on the earth, with both detachment and engagement. It's all a pilgrimage. --Satish Kumar (in Pilgrim of Life)

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. --Immanuel Kant (in Monks' Brains During Meditation)

Every forbidden topic imaginable has been covered on television, except for one. The last taboo on television is television itself and how it is profoundly biased toward high consumption ways of life that the earth cannot sustain. --Duane Elgin (in Untitled)

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labor of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am receiving. --Albert Einstein (in A Mechanic's Ministry)

With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have even lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. --Thoreau (in The Average Freshman)

Let your love flow outward through the universe, To its height, its depth, its broad extent, A limitless love, without hatred or enmity. Then as you stand or walk, Sit or lie down, As long as you are awake, Strive for this with a one-pointed mind; Your life will bring heaven to earth. --Sutta Nipata (in A Limitless Love)

Let us live a giving life. It is my awareness of what accompanies the giving act (the recognition of my reservations about giving, or my resentment, my anxiety when I serve another or hold my angry tongue) that slowly transforms me. It is the experience of my unkindness that can enable me to be truly kind, giving. --Charlotte Joko Beck (in A Giving Life)

There's no time machine. I can't change it. That was God's plan for my life, and I'm going to go with it. --Bethany Hamilton, after losing her arm (in Riding The Waves)

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. --Melody Beattie (in Gratitude)

There must be more to life than having everything! --Maurice Sendak (in Addicted to Luxury)

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. --Vernon Howard (in Simplified Shopping)

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake up and live! --Bob Marley (in Refusing an Award)

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for. --Paulo Coelho (in End of Polio)

Life itself is hazardous. There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn't know before: that there are no sharp rocks -- the road is covered with diamonds. --Charlotte Joko Beck (in Vegan For Sustainability?)

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. --Melody Beattie (in Gratitude)

You learn quickly that unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. You soon realize what the essentials of life are -- warmth when you are cold, a dry spot on a rainy day, the simplest food when you are hungry, pure cool water when you are thirsty. You soon put material things in their proper place. --Peace Pilgrim (in Sharing Warmth)

An act that positively influences the life of both the giver and the receiver is a kindness. It doesn't have to cost money or be difficult to perform. It can be spontaneous or premeditated. It can be as simple as a smile or a thank you, or as complicated as starting a non-profit organization to benefit those in need. Actively seeking out opportunities to assist others will naturally bring a certain amount of warmth and feeling of self-worth to each of us. It feels good to help others and others feel good knowing someone wants to help them. --Chuck Wall (in Giver and Receiver)

To explain that which is simple can be difficult indeed. If we can understand even one simple thing in depth, we will have greatly expanded our capacity for comprehending the nature of the universe and life itself. --David Hawkins (in Measuring Emotions)

The ongoing *WOW* is happening right now. We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, for even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with called the world is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others' presence. The world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. Our eyesight is here as a test, to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. --Timothy Levitch (in The Ongoing Wow)

Love is the form that gives life to the process and is itself increased by its own endeavor. Love becomes quite literally all. In states of coherence one is marrying oneself on all levels. Love then takes the next quantum leap and one loves all others in one's immediate reality. This then moves to an all-encompassing love for all and everything. And so loves becomes the most gentle and most powerful agent for the fielding and forming of reality. In love the lenses fall away. In love one forms all formings. In loves one arrives home at last. --Jean Huston (in Lenses Fall Away)

Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth. --Thich Nhat Hanh (in Technology and Honesty)

My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate face of universal struggle. You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people, and that leads you into land reform into Black English into Angola leads you back to your own bed where you lie by yourself, wondering if you deserve to be peaceful, or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your own unfaltering heart. And the scale shrinks to the size of a skull: your own interior cage. And then if you’re lucky, and I have been lucky, everything comes back to you. And then you know why one of the freedom fighters in the sixties, a young Black woman interviewed shortly after she was beaten up for riding near the front of the interstate bus––you know why she said, 'We are all so very happy'? It’s because it's on. All of us and me by myself: we’re on. --June Jordan (in We're On!)

Every person must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others? --Martin Luther King Jr. (in Ten Thousand Dollar Bills)

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. --William James (in Capitalism to Clean the Sky)

I've never planned my life. So that makes for some bumpy transitions but sometimes you end up in unbelievable situations. --Sarah Chayes (in Never Planned My Life)

The reason you want to make money is to be secure to live a certain way. Simply having wealth doesn't produce that end. It doesn't matter if you have a six-figure salary if you can't breathe the air or drink the water. A better question to ask would be, What are the elements of a life worth living, and how can I assemble them? --Jed Emerson (in Life Worth Living)

I don't want to be a great leader. I want to be a man who goes around with a little oil can and when he sees a breakdown, offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-colored robes. The mechanic with the oilcan, that is my ideal in life. --Baba Amte (in Mechanic With an Oil Can)

Life is a mystery until you touch the reality beyond the veil. When the mind is still and the search is intense, we have the vision to see reality all around us. Every person you meet is in a world you could know. Nature waits for our entrance, whether it is a forest or a rose. All around us is the presence waiting for a quiet mind and an open heart. Walking through the markets and riding in the subway, we can be close to the reality. We are moving through various states of reality during the day. --Herman Rednick (in Reality Beyond The Veil)

Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination. --Oscar Wilde (in Rolling For Peace)

At every moment in every person’s life there is work to be done, always work to be done, some of it small, some of it Great. The Great Work, in a sense, always has to do with healing the world, changing the world, and, as a necessary predicate to that, understanding the world. You rise every morning aware that you are called to this work. You won’t live to see it finished. But if you can’t hear it calling, you aren’t listening hard enough. It’s always calling, sometimes in a big voice, sometimes in a quiet voice. --Tony Kushner (in The Great Work)

When life gives you lemons... make lemonade! --Author Unknown (in When Life Gives You Lemons...)

The best things in life aren't things. --Art Buchwald (in Best Things in Life)

The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you "come to terms with" only to discover that they are still there. The real questions refuse to be placated. They barge into your life at the times when it seems most important for them to stay away. They are the questions asked most frequently and answered most inadequately, the ones that reveal their true natures slowly, reluctantly, most often against your will. --Ingrid Bengis (in The Real Questions)

You are not just a meaningless fragment in an alien universe, briefly suspended between life and death, allowed a few short-lived pleasures followed by pain and ultimate annihilation. Underneath your outer form, you are connected with something so vast, so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be spoken of. --Eckhart Tolle (in Power of Now)

You learn to cultivate other areas of your life that are there, that are untapped. When someone is in that frame of mind you can handle anything, you can be more compassionate. You don't put yourself down so much, you don't have to struggle with yourself trying to be perfect. --Dalia Isicoff (in Meditation and Arthritis)

You are held within the web of life, within flows of energy and intelligence far exceeding your own. --Joanna Macy (in 'V' Formation)

My only regret of a fabulous life was that I didn’t have any children, but now I am blessed with over 100! --Rosamond Carr, founder of an orphanage (in Land of Thousand Hills)

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, but do not be disheartened; the source they come from is eternal, growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you; and this whole world is springing up from it. --Rumi (in Clandestine Brain Activity)

It is the story of two young men who leave on an adventurous journey throughout an unknown continent, and this journey of discovery becomes one of self-discovery as well. This is a film about the emotional and political elections we have to make in life. It’s also about friendship, about solidarity. Finally, it's about finding one's place in the world, one that is worth fighting for. --Walter Salles, on 'Motorcycle Diaries' (in An Adventurous Journey)

When you have seen beyond yourself, then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there. And the time will come, when you see that we're all one, and life flows on, within you and without you. --George Harrison (in Untitled)

When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it, explaining and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect, all these experiences in self-gratification seem pure fantasy. --Stephen Covey (in When I Look Back)

Share with others the fullness of spirit that flows from your religious life. Give of yourself: give time, not just money; give directly, not just impersonally; above all, give love. --Arthur Green (in Journey is the Destination)

The mystery, the essence of all life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening. --Toni Packer (in Simple Listening)

And that is why I have to go back to so many places in the future, there to find myself and constantly examine my life with no witness but the moon and then whistle with joy ambling over rocks and doors of Earth with no task but to live, with no family but the road. --Pablo Neruda (in No Task But To Live)