fr. bede's Favorite Quotes

listed by topic. Updated September 14, 2003. Enjoy!

anger

Whenever we hold on to our anger we turn “small stuff” into really “big stuff” in our minds. We start to believe that our positions are more important than our happiness. They are not. anon

Anything that is done out of negativity is automatically contaminated and will only end up creating more suffering. Eckhart Tolle

Action arising out of a sense of what is needed is always more effective than action arising out of negativity. Eckhart Tolle

"Speak when you're angry,

and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret."

Lawrence J. Peter

attitude

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. Ludwig Wittgenstein

I am serious in my commitments but light hearted in fulfilling them Julia Cameron

Awareness

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Henry Thoreau

The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

Julia Cameron

I allow myself to feel the support of universal forces Julia Cameron

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

Carl Jung

A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.

George Gurdjieff

Beauty

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

Beauty is not read into works of art, God’s and men’s; it radiates out of them.

John Saward. The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty. 1977. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. p. 47.

being centered

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and

don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner

peace.

The Dalai Lama

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Buddha

When biting and painful slander does not affect you, then you can be called perceptive.

Confucius. Analects 12:6.

Few lose out on account of prudence.

Confucius. Analects 4:23.

He who knows that enough is enough will have enough.

Lao-Tzu

The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Thomas Carlyle

The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.

William Rounseville Alger

The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.

Josiah Gilbert Holland

If you get the inside right, the outside will take care of itself. Eckhart Tolle

There is only one journey---going inside yourself. Rainer Maria Rilke

Change

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene. Arthur Christopher Benson

To remain young, one must change. Alexander Chase

The great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart. Mencius

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. Erica Jong

Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don’t let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity.

R.I. Fitzhenry

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life: rather look to them with full hope that as they arise, God, whose very own you are, will lead you safely through all things; and when you cannot stand it, God will carry you in His arms. Do not fear what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you then and every day. He will either shield you from suffering, or will give you the unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace and put aside all anxious thought and imaginations.

compassion

I allow the action of loving compassion to alchemize all difficulty into an opportunity to find the hidden face of God and cherish it. Julia Cameron

Compassion is divine in nature, but human in expression. Julia Cameron

As I resolve to be a gateway for kindness to enter into the world, I am led myself into a kinder world.

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness,

and nothing is so gentle as real strength."

Ralph W. Sockman

Creativity

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you willfind happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

Dale Carnegie

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

Alexander Graham Bell

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

Miles Davis

It is wise to learn; it is God-like to create.

John Saxe

Twenty years fron now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

A fool’s brain digests art into pedantry.

G.B. Shaw Man and Superman. NY: Penguin Books 1946. Preface.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

Richard Bach

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

André Gide

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Leonardo Da Vinci

The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration.

Paul Brunton

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Pablo Picasso:

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce

“To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?

Katharine Graham:

Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while
discouragement often nips it at the bud.

Osborn, Alex

Doing

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Thomas Alva Edison

Do what you love, and the money will follow. Marsha Sinetar

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. Buddha

Generosity

Cultivated people seek from themselves; small people seek from others.

Confucius. Analects 15:17.

Whether people like us or not depends on how much we think of others’ good. The Dalai Lama

Growth

We find comfort among those who agree with us—growth among those who don’t.

Frank A Clark

"Do not pray for easy lives, but pray to be stronger men [and women]. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, but pray for power equal to your task. Then the accomplishing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle." - Phillips Brooks

The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have. Anna Quindlen

happiness

To find joy in another's joy that is the secret of happiness.

--George Bernanos

If you want to be a more peaceful person, you must understand that being right is almost never more important than allowing yourself to be happy,.

It is illogical to expect smiles from others if one does not smile oneself. Therefore, one can see that many things depend on one’s behavior. The Dalai Lama

Having

Treat all things as if they were loaned to you without any ownership - whether body or soul, sense or strength, external goods or honors, house or hall...everything.

Meister Eckhart

Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.

Anwar El-Sadat

"The best things in life aren’t things."

Art Buchwald

Healing

We are stardust, billion year old carbon

We are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain,

And we have got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Joni Mitchell.

Heart

That’s what people want when you play. They want to hear your heart.

Bruser, p. 54

Honesty

Don’t deceive him, even if you have to offend him.

Confucius. Analects. 14:23.

Humility

You can accomplish much if you don’t care who gets the credit.

Ronald Reagan

Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

George Santayana

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

Andre Gide:

The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Thomas Carlyle

Cultivated people are serene but not haughty. Petty people are haughty but not serene.

Confucius. Analects. 13:26.

Even if you have fine abilities, if you are arrogant and stingy, the rest is not worth considering.

Confucius. Analects. 8:11.

When cultivated people look, they think of how to see clearly. When they listen, they think of how to hear keenly. In regard to their appearance, they think of how to be warm. In their demeanor, they think of how to be respectful. In their speech, they think of how to be truthful. In their work, they think of how to be serious. When in doubt, they think of how to pose questions. When angry, they think of trouble. When they see gain to be had, they think of justice.

Confucius. Analects 16:10.

If you cannot correct yourself, what can you do about correcting others?

Confucius. Analects 13:13.

The disciple said, “I am not yet able to be sure about this.” Confucius was pleased.

Confucius. Analects 5 ;6.

Be an exemplary man of learning, not a trivial pedant.

Confucius. Analects 6:13.

When you see unwise people, reflect inwardly on yourself.

Confucius. Analects 4;17.

If people are not humane, what is the use of rites? If people are not humane, what is the use of music?

Confucius. Analects 3:3.

Leadership

If the leaders are courteous, then the people are easy to employ.

Confucius. Analects 14:43.

If you are personally upright, things get done without any orders being given. If you are not personally upright, no one will obey even if you do give orders.

Confucius. Analects 13:6

Preside over the people with dignity and they will be serious. Be filial and kind and they will be loyal. Promote the good, instruct the unskilled, and they will be enthusiastic.

Confucius Analects 2:20.

Music

Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
-- Amiel

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.
-- Thomas Beecham

Music is the universal language of mankind.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.
-- Lord Erskine

The musician who always plays on the same string is laughed at.
-- Horace

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
-- Thomas Carlyle

We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency.
-- Mark Twain

Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have here below.
-- Joseph Addison, from A Song for St. Cecilia's Day

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
-- Samuel Johnson

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven

When words leave off, music begins.
-- Heinrich Heine

Music must rank as the highest of the arts -- more than any other, it ministers to human welfare.
-- Herbert Spencer

Life without music would be a mistake.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Wagner's music has some wonderful moments but awful half hours.
-- Gioacchino

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Huxley

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Berthold Auerbach

From the metaphysical point of view there is nothing that can touch the formless except the art of music which in itself is formless.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Music is such a great gift to mankind, not because it gives the ultimate answers before their time but because it impels man to the search and gives him another arena for it. The wordless quest is appropriate to the unknowable.

Halter

All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature.

Rudolf Steiner

Music is both the gift and the giving, the musician both giver and recipient.

Zuckerkandl

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

When words leave off, music begins.

Heinrich Heine

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music.

Agnes de Mille

Mystery

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Voltaire

In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable.

Alexis Carrel

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Francis Bacon

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Huxley

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than
live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

Henry Emerson Fosdic

PURITY

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world." George Bernard Shaw

Purpose

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.” William Cowper

Serenity

Exemplary people are even-tempered and clear-minded. Petty people are always fretting. Confucius. Analects 7:36.

Don’t talk about what is already done; don’t remonstrate about what is alredy over; don’t criticize what has already happened.
Confucius. Analects 3:21.

Cultivated people harmonize without imitating. Immature people imitate without harmonizing. Confucious. Analects. 13.23.

spirituality

My spirituality is grounded in joy. Julia Cameron

truth

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
--Rene Descartes

Vision

Cultivated people reach upward; petty people reach downward. Confucius. Analects 14:24.

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. Evan Esar