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A Man's Book of the spirit by Bill Alexander	The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz, Don Miguel Ruiz	An Open Heart by Dalai Lama
A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen	The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren	The Tao Of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, lawyer and
politician, from his book "The Advancement of Learning"

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must
first be overcome.

-- Samuel Johnson, "Rasselas", 1759

Every heart that has beat strongly
and cheerfully has left a hopeful
impulse behind it in the world,
and bettered the tradition of mankind.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Because of my title I was the first to enter here.
I shall be the last to go out.

-- Duchesse d'Alencon, refusing help during a fire at a Paris
charity bazaar in 1897

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws,
to be led by permanent ideals -
that is what keeps a man patient
when the world ignores him,
and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

-- Honore De Balzac

Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation.
Wholeheartedness is contagious.
Give yourself, if you wish to get others.

-- David Seabury

What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!
In form, in moving, how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a God!

-- Shakespeare, from "Hamlet"
 

To be what we are, and to become what
we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson, "Of Men and Books," 1882

There is no such thing as a great talent without great
will-power.
-- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist

There is surely a piece of divinity in us,
something that was before the elements,
and owes no homage to the sun.

-- Sir Thomas Brown (1830-79) English physician and writer,
from "Religio Medici."

That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence
inside you that makes you want to believe that there still
exists
a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the
end.

-- Lise Hand, describing the late Irish journalist Veronica
Guerin.

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two
greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength
of mind.

-- William Hazlitt, "Characteristics," 1823

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory
of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones and charms brutes. It
is
the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories
without it.

-- Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) British
novelist
and politician.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
Just because the rains descend, and the winds blow,
we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing
strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should
reply: To the superiority of their women.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America," 1835

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act
but
a habit.

-- Aristotle

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind
can see.

-- Mark Twain

We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall
fight in the seas or oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the
fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall
never surrender.

.--Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons on
British resistance to the Nazis, June 1940

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility.
An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

-- William Penn

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the
foundation of courage and true progress.

-- Nicholas Murray Butler

Children need models rather than critics.

-- Joseph Joubert, "Pensees," 1842

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

-- T.S. Eliot

God is in the details

-- attributed to Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

We need translators, bearing in mind that to translate without betrayal
One must experienced oneself the content that is to be carried across

-- Ananda Coomaraswamy

We cannot be happy
if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity.
Happiness is not a matter of intensity,
but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony

-- Thomas Merton

Through Reverence for Life
I raise my existence to its highest value
and offer it to the world

-- Albert Schweitzer

The irony of desire is
that when you receive the object of desire,
it creates that state of mind we call satisfaction
for only a moment

-- Stephen Levine

Easier said than done this

-- Anonymous

Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things

-- Ernest Renan

All paths lead to the same goal,
to convey to others what we are

-- Pablo Veruda

We come into this world alone,
and alone we leave it.
And between the entrance and the exit,
we spend our time looking for companionship

-- E.M. Dooling

If we don't know where we are,
we don't know who we are

-- Wallace Stegner

God provides the wind,
but man must raise the sails

-- Saint Augustine

We have forgotten who we are
We have sought only for our own security
We have exploited simply for our own ends
We have distorted our knowledge
We have abused our power

-- U.N Environmental Sabbath program

I imagine, therefore i belong and am free

-- Lawrence Durrell

True ambition is not what we are thought it was.
True ambition and walk humbly under the grace of God

-- Bill Wilson

For every one who exalts himself will be humbled,
And he who humbles himself will be exalted

-- Luke 14:11

But when i breath with the birds,
The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings
And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep

-- Theodore Roethke

Boredom is simply a lack of attention

-- Christopher Fremantle

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.
He inspires self-trust.
He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him.
He will have no disciple.

-- Amos Bronson Alcott

God is burning out of you everything which is unlike himself

-- Mother Teresa

The man who never alters his opinions
is like standing water,
and breeds reptiles of the mind.

-- William Blake

God in us - entheos - enthusiasm;
this is the essence of holy madness

-- Norman O. Brown

It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life

-- Anonymous

Forgetfulness of self is remembrance of God.
Whoever knows God through God
becomes alive,
and whoever knows God through self
becomes dead.

-- Abu Yazid Al-Bistami

I will tell you something about stories,
(he said)
They aren't just entertainment.
Don't be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
All we have to fight off
illness and death

-- Leslie Marmon Silko

In the archer there is a resemblance to the mature person.
When he misses the mark,
he turns and seeks the reason
for his failure in himself

-- Confucius

If i am not for myself, who is for me?
And if i am only for myself, what am i?
And if not now, when?

-- Hillel

Yet listen well. Not to my words,
but to the tumult that rages in
your body when you listen to yourself

-- Rene Daumal

We are each so much more than what some reduce to measuring

-- Karen Kaiser Clark

In the beginners' mind there are many possibilities;
In the experts' mind there are few.

-- Shunryu Suzuki

Growth is the only evidence of life

-- John Henry Newman

Without heroes, we are all plain people
and don't know how far we can go

-- Bernard Malamud

Man cannot live by bread alone. He must have peanut butter

-- Brother Dave Gardner

A hero is a man who does what he can

-- Roman Rolland

Inside each of us is a baby we have to protect.
This baby is all future generations...

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

There is more to life than increasing its speed

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Healing may not be so much about getting better,
as about letting go of everything that isn't you -
all of the expectations, all of the beliefs -
and becoming who you are

-- Rachel Naomi Remen

I observe myself and so i come to know others

-- Lao Tse

When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible ....
To heal ourselves we must heal our planet
and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves

-- Bobby McLeod

Why should we consider prayer an embarrassing exception to the rule that imagination, fantasy, personification, analogy and dramatization are invaluable techniques for positioning ourselves creatively in the world ?

-- Sam Keen

The little things? The little moments? They aren't little

-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Man's loneliness is but his fear of life

-- Eugene O'Neill

The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart

-- Mencius

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full

-- Marcel Proust

Not i - not anyone else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself

-- Walt Whitman

Better than a thousand useless words is one single word that gives peace

-- Dhammapada

He who would learn to fly one day
must first learn to stand and
walk and run and climb and dance;
One cannot fly into flying

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Listen, or your tongues will keep you deaf

-- Native American Proverb

He who has to walk with fools has a long journey of sorrow...
but the joy of being with the wise is like  the joy
of meeting a beloved kinsman

-- Dhammapada

We are monumentally distracted by a
pervasive technological culture that appears
to have a life of its own,
one that insists on our full attention, continually
seducing us and pulling us away from
the opportunity to experience directly
the true meaning of our own lives

-- Al Gore

One can acquire everything in solitude ... except character

-- Stendahl

It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty

-- Francis Bacon

The paradox of courage is
that a man must be a little careless of his life
even in order to keep it

-- G.K. Chesterton

Life without a friend;
death without a witness

-- George Herbert

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but
friendship is a slow ripening fruit

-- Aristotle

It is the province of knowledge to speak and
it is the privilege of wisdom to listen

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Happiness and beauty are by-products

-- George Bernard Shaw

If you imagine that
once you have accomplished your ambitions
you will have time to turn to the Way,
you will discover that your ambitions
never come to an end

-- Yoshida Kenko

Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things,
man will not himself find peace

-- Albert Schweitzer

I hope the leaders of the YMCA start a campaign
to induce good young man to do nothing

-- Bertrand Russell

All miseries derive from not being able to sit quitely
in a room alone
 

-- Pascal

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed, and
the wisdom to distinguish one from the other

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

A woman needs a man
Like a fish needs a bicycle

-- U2

Addiction is
any compulsive, habitual behavior
that limits the freedom of human desire

-- Gerald G. May

Habit is overcome by habit

-- Thomas A Kempis

Happiness is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness

-- William Saroyan

Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth

-- Peter Ustinov

The fundamental defect of fathers is
that they want their children to be a credit to them

-- Bertrand Russell

It is the responsibility of every adult... to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone

-- Marian Wright Edelman

It is a terrible thing
To be so open;
it is as if my heart put on a face
and i walked into the world

-- Sylvia Plath

Sickness is felt,
but health not at all

-- Thomas Fuller

My religion is very simple,
my religion is kindness

-- Dalai Lama

Life always gets harder toward the summit-
the cold increases-
responsibility increases

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Restfulness is a quality for cattle;
the virtues are all active,
life is alert

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

May men [at mid-life]
remain stuck in a shaky myth of their won power,
alienated from the rest of themselves

-- Samuel Osherson

Parents have become so convinced
that educators know what is best for children
that they forget that they themselves are really the experts

-- Marian Wright Edelman

And if you say that i am young and tender,
and the time for seeking is not come,
you ought to know that
to seek true religion there is never a time not fit ...

-- Prince Siddhartha (via Jack Kerouac)

Nobody today is normal,
everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced,
people's mind are running all the time...
They are eaten alive by their egos

-- Taisen Deshimaru

Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul
even to your smallest acts.
This is the secret of success

-- Swami Sivananda

Nature is what she is -
amoral and persistent

-- Stephen Jay Gould

Imagination is more important than knowledge

-- Albert Einstein

Seldom, or perhaps never,
does a marriage develop into an individual
relationship smoothly and without crises;
there is no coming to consciousness without pain

-- Carl Gustav Jung

Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention
that we harbor within

-- Morihei Ueshiba

Early to rise and early to bed
makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead

-- James Thurber

...if we do not change our daily lives,
we cannot change the world

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

When the fight begins within himself
A man is worth something

-- Robert Browning

We are a divided species-
head running ahead of heart.
It is no surprise that coronary thrombosis
is the characteristic death of our time.
The heart literally chokes up on
the impossibility of keeping up

-- Brian Alldiss

To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven ...

-- Ecclesiastes 3:1

No more man is more cheated than the selfish man

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Besides the noble art of getting things done,
there is the noble art of leaving things undone.
The wisdom of life consists in the
elimination of nonessentials

-- Lin Yu Tang

Age is only a cipher,
a number for the records.
A man can't retire his experience.
He must use it

-- Bernard M. Baruch

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time

-- T.S. Eliot

Hope and fear cannot alter the season

-- Chogyam Trungpa

But too many people now climb onto the cross
merely to be seen from a greater distance,
even if they have to trample somewhat on
the one who has been there so long

-- Albert Camus

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old;
seek what they sought

-- Matsuo Basho

It is our duty to compose our character,
not to compose books,
and to win, not battles and provinces,
but order and tranquility
for our conduct of life

-- Montaigne

Transformations is the word.
We can do the work of transformation
only in the present moment

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

You may not call me naive.
If you must label me,
you may call me "not cynical"

-- Molly Brodsky

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional

-- Anonymous