You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things. --Mary Oliver (in Wild Geese)

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (in Lending People)

Take the time to pray – it is the sweet oil that eases the hinge into the garden so the doorway can swing open easily. You can always go there. Consider yourself blessed. These stones that break your bones will build the altar of your love. Your home is the garden. Carry its odor, hidden in you, into the city. Suddenly your enemies will buy seed packets and fall to their knees to plant flowers in the dirt by the road. They’ll call you Friend and honor your passing among them…. Give everything away except your garden, your worry, your fear, your small-mindedness. Your garden can never be taken from you. --Lynn Park (in Your Garden)

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. --Virgina Woolf (in People's Grocery)

Where there is love there is life. --Gandhi (in Untitled)

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. --Oscar Wilde (in Locks of Love)

The day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off thinks seen for the silence they hold. It is in the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. --David Whyte (in The Opening of Eyes)

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well? --Jack Kornfield (in Near Death)

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. --Albert Schweitzer (in Bhutan)

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love. --Lao-Tse (in Mother Wright)

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. --Jiddu Krishnamurti (in Heart of the Matter)

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. --Martin Luther King Jr., December 11, 1964 (in MLK Day)

It is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others. If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others. --Author Unknown (in Research Links Meditation With Compassion)

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. --Bobby - age 7 (in Altruism and the Young)

We can do no great things, only small things with great love. --Mother Teresa (in Small Clicks with Great Love)

Loving means saying yes to your belonging. It isn't just an emotional thing. "Love your neighbor" means that you belong together and you say yes to that belonging. --Brother David Steindl-Rast (in Waves of Service)

We ache at the violence, pain, and hunger in our world, and inside us is a will to help. But 'help' only helps if it is an active expression of love. Otherwise our attempts to help, limited by narrow self-concern, become rigid and too easily discouraged. --John Makransky (in The Altruism of Children)

I think there comes a time when it's not enough for us just to help other people. There's something inside us that yearns to give ourselves up for the sake of other people. Sacrifice is the language of love. --Mother Antonia (in Beloved 'Hijos' of Mother Antonia)

It's not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely. --Leo Buscaglia (in Kids on Love)

Come out of the circle of time, and into the circle of love. --Rumi (in South American Twist in Time)

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star. --e.e. cummings (in The Abbot and 18 Tigers)

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, "You owe Me." Look what happens with a love like that, It lights the whole sky. --Hafiz (in Humble Grocer Donates Millions)

There is a Power within that knows beyond our knowings; we are greater than our thoughts, and sometimes earth reveals that vision here. To live, to love, are signs of infinite things ... --Sri Aurobindo (in Legendary Doctor Passes On)

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow. --Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in Turning Water Into Child's Play)

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. --Sophia Loren (in 12 Year Old Who Doesn't Age)

He drew a circle that shut me out -- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in. --Edwin Markham (in Homeless World Cup)

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves. --Eric Hoffer (in A Grieving Mother's Incredible Compassion)

One has to find in their heart the devotion to serve the Truth that’s found, moment to moment. That’s an act of love, to serve. It gets us out of the last vestige of self-centered relationship with our experience. --Adyashanti (in Vitamin C: Cancer Cure?)

I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. --Og Mandino (in Lighting Up the World with LED)

There is something deep within our nature. A guiding light if you will. A voice that always speaks of goodness. A voice that is always moving us towards more love, towards more life. Can we hear it? Sitting in silence is an attempt to become in tune with your own self, with your own voice. --Sukh Chugh (in One Million Meditate for Peace)

Work like you don't need the money, love like your heart has never been broken, and dance like no one is watching. --Aurora Greenway (in Dancing Classrooms)

For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it. --Ivan Panin (in Turning Everest's Trash Into Treasure)

Love is a believing creature. --Ovid (in Teens Build Soybean-Fueled Car)

Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And, cooking done with care is an act of love. --Craig Clairborne (in Lunch Lady With A Mission)

We're never so vulnerable as when we trust someone -- but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. --Walter Anderson (in The Speed of Trust)

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. --Rainer Maria Rilke (in New Hampshire Senate Makes History)

I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint -- and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you. --Oprah Winfrey (in The Story of Johnny the Bagger)

Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other -- it doesn't matter who it is -- and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other. --Mother Teresa (in Smiles Per Hour in Australia)

Everybody can be great because everybody can serve ... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant. --Martin Luther King Jr. (in Karma Tycoon: Incubating Compassion)

Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly. --Sam Keen (in The Four Fingered Pianist)

Even after all this time The Sun never says to the Earth "You owe me" Look what happens With a love like that It lights The Whole Sky --Hafiz (in The Importance of Bedtime Stories)

All the children who are held and loved will know how to love others...Spread these virtues in the world. Nothing more need be done. --Ming Li (in The Work Of Half The Sky)

Listen. In every office you hear the threads of love and joy and fear and guilt, the cries for celebration and reassurance, and somehow you know that connecting those threads is what you are supposed to do and business takes care of itself. --James Autry (in Leprosy And A Mother's Love)

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (in Harvard Professor Resolves Ethiopian Crisis)

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much. --Mother Teresa (in A Clinic for the Little Things that Matter Most)

It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on. --Sharon Salzberg (in Eighty Year Study On Happiness & Giving)

When your fear touches someone's pain, it becomes pity. When your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion. --Stephen Levine (in Argentina Shoe Drop)

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. --Mary Ann Radmacher (in A Great-Grandfather Starts School)

That's all nonviolence is - organized love. --Joan Baez (in A Father Teaches Non-Violence)

In fact, taking tamales to the church potluck or reading in the classroom - all those little acts are philanthropic. Philanthropy means love of humankind. --Santamaría (in Immigrant Gardeners Become Philanthropists)