For a bowl of water give a goodly meal; For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal; For a simple penny pay thou back with gold; If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold. Thus the words and actions of the wise regard; Every little service tenfold the reward. But the truly noble know all men as one, And return with gladness good for evil done. --Influential poem in Gandhi's life (in Untitled)

Your actions in life set your course and determine the destination of your travels. Your reactions in life create the climate in which you travel. --Beth Johnson (in Untitled)

People spend their whole life pursuing everything. Indeed, their spirits are buried alive by everything. How can it be that layers of prison are what we pursue in life? --Chi Tan (in Untitled)

If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions. --Padmasambhava (in Untitled)

The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In daily life, be competent. In action, be aware of the time and the season. No fight: No blame. --Lao Tzu (in Untitled)

To love is the greatest thing in life; it is very important to talk about love, to feel it, to nourish it, to treasure it, otherwise it will soon be dissipated, for the world is very brutal. If while you are young you don't feel love, if you don't look with love at people, at animals, at flowers, when you grow up you find that your life is empty; you will be very lonely, and the dark shadows of fear will follow you always. But the moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. --Krishnamurti (in Untitled)

We were talking-about the space between us all And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion Never glimpse the truth-then it's far too late-when they pass away. We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it To try our best to hold it there-with our love With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew. Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change And to see you're really only very small, and life flows on within you and without you. We were talking-about the love that's gone so cold and the people, Who gain the world and lose their soul- they don't know-they can't see-are you one of them? When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there- And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you. --George Harrison (in Untitled)

Innocence alone can be passionate. The innocent have no sorrow, no suffering, though they have had a thousand experiences. It is not the experiences that corrupt the mind but what they leave behind, the residue, the scars, the memories. These accumulate, pile one on top of the other, and then sorrow begins. This sorrow is time. Where time is, innocency is not. Passion is not born of sorrow. Sorrow is experience, the experience of everyday life, the life of agony and fleeting pleasures, fears and certainties. You cannot escape from experiences, but they need not take root in the soil of the mind. These roots give rise to problems, conflicts and constant struggle. There is no way out of this but to die each day to every yesterday. The clear mind alone can be passionate. Without passion you cannot see the breeze among the leaves or the sunlight on the water. Without passion, there is no love. --J. Krishnamurti (in Untitled)

The mind seeks to nail life down and get it to stop moving and changing. When this doesn't work, the mind begins to seek the changeless, the eternal, something that doesn't move. But the mind of thought is itself an expression of life's movement and so must always be in movement itself. --Adyashanti (in Untitled)

I ain't got no checkbook and I ain't got no credit cards. To me money is a lot like water. For some folks it rushes through their life like a raging river. Money comes through my life like a trickle. But I want to pass it on in a way that does some good for the most folks. --Gertrude, in 'Soul of Money' (in Untitled)

It is up to each individual, which then moves to your family, which moves to your community. Each person, in their own life, let your life be a light for peace, for justice, for all that is good. Just let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. --Oprah Winfrey (in 276 Pontiacs)

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends, and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls - family, health, friends, and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. --Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola (1994) (in Juggling Five Balls)

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. --Morrie Schwartz (in Life With Purpose)

Live all of life as a new experience and you will be free. Free from worry. Free from expectation. Free from previously gained understandings. Free from earlier experiences that hold you bound to the positive or negative aspects of other people or external events. Let everything in life be new. --Scott Shaw in Zen O'Clock (in Untitled)

The place where we can most directly open to the mystery of life is in what we don't do well; in the places of our struggles and vulnerability. These places always require surrender and letting go; when we let ourselves become vulnerable, new things can be born in us. In risking the unknown we gain a sense of life itself. And most remarkably, that which we have sought is often just here, buried under the problem and the weakness itself. When difficulties arise, we project our frustration into them as if it were the rain, the children, the world outside that was the source of our discomfort. We imagine that we can change the world and then be happy. But it is not by moving the rocks that we find happiness and awakening, but by transforming our relationship to them. --Jack Kornfield (in Mystery of Life)

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people ... eternal life. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good -- death as well as life, sin as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. --Herman Hesse in 'Siddhartha' (in Everything is Necessary)

In Africa, they say there are two hungers, the lesser hunger and the greater hunger. The lesser hunger is for the things that sustain life, the goods and services, and the money to pay for them, which we all need. The greater hunger is for an answer to the question "why?", for some understanding of what that life is for. --Charles Handy (in The Greater Hunger)

In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. --Ken Wilber (in Share-It Square)

It's the Circle of Life And it moves us all Through despair and hope Through faith and love Till we find our place On the path unwinding In the Circle The Circle of Life. --Tim Rice (in DotComGuy)

Gratefulness is the only appropriate response to that which is given ... and this life is a given. Every human being can realize that: We didn't make ourselves, we didn't even choose this life. If you train yourself to be grateful for everything, every moment, then when you come to something that you don't like, you realize it's still given and you have to deal with it. You will be alert to the gift within every gift, which is opportunity. --Brother David Steindl-Rast (in Gratefulness)

There are those who give little of the much which they have, and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. --Gibran (in Grains of Rice)

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. --Abraham Lincoln (in Dipsea Demon)

I slept and dreamt that life was joy, I awoke and saw that life was service, I acted and, behold, service was joy. --Rahindranath Tagore (in Service as Retirement)

Look at each day as a chance to invest life into life. Each day is a chance to work miracles in the lives of others. --Jim Rohn (in Invest in Life)

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. --William Blake (in Highline Park)

Life can not give me joy and peace, it is up to me to will it. Life just gives me time and space, it is up to me to fill it. --William James (in Life Time)

Love After Love The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome, And say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. --Derek Walcott (in Untitled)

Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water. --Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Hungarian biochemist and Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine (in Water Life)

The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear. --Felix Adler (in Untitled)

The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away. --Joy J. Golliver (in Heart of Gold)

If we live thinking of ourselves all the time, our life will seem short, it starts with our birth and it ends when we die! But if we live for others, meaning, we live for a notion and a methodology, our life will seem very long! It starts since humanity existed and it lasts until after we die. --Syed Qutub (in Modest School Teacher Wills Millions To Charity)

Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich. --Sarah Bernhardt (in Oprah's Favorite Giveaway)

Life just seems so full of connections. Most of the time we don't even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces. --Colin Neenan (in Hospital Learns From Car Racing)

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. --Henry David Thoreau (in The GoodWork Project)

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. --Morrie Schwartz (in Doctor Who Treats Patients -- At Any Cost)

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them. --Ann Morrow Lindbergh (in The Clothesline Makes A Comeback)

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. --William Shakespeare (in The Science Of Sleep and Scent)

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good. --Bertrand Russell (in How Do We Understand Each Other?)

Few people know that they have the power to bless life. We bless the life in each other far more than we realize. Many simple, ordinary things that we do can affect those around us in profound ways. --Rachel Naomi Remen (in Mike's Handcarved Canes)

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. --Frederick Buechner (in Six Degrees of Instant Messaging)

Everyone understands that water is essential to life. But many are only just now beginning to grasp how essential it is to everything in life food, energy, transportation, nature, leisure, identity, culture, social norms, and virtually all the products used on a daily basis. --World Business Council for Sustainable Development (in Flow: The Movie About Water)

Use every letter you write, every conversation you have, every meeting you attend, to express your fundamental beliefs and dreams. Affirm to others the vision of the world you want. You are a free, immensely powerful source of life and goodness. Affirm it. Spread it. Radiate it. Think day and night about it and you will see a miracle happen: the greatness of our own life. --Robert Muller (in Sixty-five Roses: A Sister's Memoir)

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. --William Shakespeare (in How Much Sleep Do We Need?)

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. --Abraham Lincoln (in Video Games vs. The Aging Brain)

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. --Rabindranath Tagore (in From Mansion to Mud Hut)

My own experience about all the blessings I've had in my life is that the more I give away, the more that comes back. That is the way life works, and that is the way energy work. --Ken Blanchard (in Random Acts of Kindness Across the Country)

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. --Helen Keller (in More Miracles in Japan)

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. --Robert Byrne (in Simple Philosophy of the World's Oldest Man)

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. --Abraham Lincoln (in Secrets to Longevity)

While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about. --Angela Schwindt (in Where Children Sleep: A Poignant Photo Series)