Tao / Dao

Tao or Dao is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'. Within the context of traditional Chinese philosophy and religion, Tao is a metaphysical concept originating with Laozi that gave rise to a religion referred to in English with the single term Taoism. The concept of Tao was later adopted in Confucianism, Chán and Zen Buddhism and more broadly throughout East Asian philosophy and religion in general. Within these contexts Tao signifies the primordial essence or fundamental nature of the universe. In the foundational text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching, Laozi explains that Tao is not a 'name' for a 'thing' but the underlying natural order of the universe whose ultimate essence is difficult to circumscribe. Tao is thus "eternally nameless” and to be distinguished from the countless 'named' things which are considered to be its manifestations.

In Taoism, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism, the object of spiritual practice is to 'become one with the tao' (Tao Te Ching) or to harmonise one's will with Nature (cf. Stoicism) in order to achieve 'effortless action' (Wu wei). This involves meditative and moral practices. Important in this respect is the Taoist concept of De (德; virtue).

In all its uses, Dao is considered to have ineffable qualities that prevent it from being defined or expressed in words. It can, however, be known or experienced, and its principles (which can be discerned by observing Nature) can be followed or practiced. Much of East Asian philosophical writing focuses on the value of adhering to the principles of Tao and the various consequences of failing to do so. In Confucianism and religious forms of Daoism these are often explicitly moral/ethical arguments about proper behavior, while Buddhism and more philosophical forms of Daoism usually refer to the natural and mercurial outcomes of action (comparable to karma). Dao is intrinsically related to the concepts yin and yang, where every action creates counter-actions as unavoidable movements within manifestations of the Dao, and proper practice variously involves accepting, conforming to, or working with these natural developments.

The concept of Tao differs from conventional (western) ontology, however; it is an active and holistic conception of Nature, rather than a static, atomistic one.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote Worthy

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say – because they were too obvious. - Andre Gide 

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do. - Henry Ford

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there’s love and inspiration, I don’'t think you can go wrong. - Ella Fitzgerald

The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly; the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get. - Bernard Meltzer

Do we really know anybody? Who does not wear one face to hide another? - Frances Marion

When a thing is done, it’s done. Don’t look back. Look forward to your next objective. - George C. Marshall

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. - Thomas Merton

The Young Doctor

A young doctor had just opened office and felt really excited. His secretary told him a man was here to see him. The young doctor told her to send him in.

Pretending to be a busy doctor, he picked up the phone just as the man came in. “Yes, that’s right. The fee is two hundred dollars. Yes, I’ll expect you ten past two. All right. No later. I’m a very busy man.”

He hung up and turned to the man waiting. “May I help you?”

“No,” said the man. “I just came in to install the phone.”

Greatness

Be not afraid of greatness: . . . Some are born great, Some achieve greatness, And some have greatness thrust upon them. - Shakespeare

Great is he who enjoys his earthenware as if it were plate, and not less great is the man to whom all plate is no more than earthenware. - Seneca

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength. - Unknown

It is an invincible greatness of mind not to be elevated or dejected with good or ill fortune. - Seneca

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him. - John Steinbeck

Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies. - Baltasar Gracian

Recipe for greatness – To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great. - Zane Grey

The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you’ve been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. - Richard Nixon

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it – who can say this is not greatness? - William Makepeace Thackeray

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it. - Seneca

Flowers

A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire. - Diane Ackerman

A weed is but an unloved flower. - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Did you know… that when you walk past a flower, whether it be in somebody’s garden or on a vacant hillside, the flower will always smile at you. The most polite way to respond, I’ve been told, is to cheerfully return the smile. - Ron Atchison

Do not hurry. You are only here for a short visit. So be sure to stop and smell the flowers. - Walter Hagen

Do not mock the wild flowers by the side of the freeways. This random scattering adds colour to the landscape and scenery. They take the tiredness from your eyes so you will be alert on the road. They are Mother Nature’s way of adding colour to an otherwise dull, long or boring journey and ensuring you arrive safely at your destination. - Vincent Thnay

Don’t strew me with roses after I'm dead. When Death claims the light of my brow, no flowers of life will cheer me. Instead, you may give me my roses now! - Thomas F. Healey

Earth laughs in flowers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers grow out of dark moments. - Corita Kent

Flowers have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor. - Henry Ward Beecher

Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. - Hans Christian Anderson

If you want the flowers in your garden to be glorious and to smell good, you must risk an occasional stink. - Unknown

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers why not gather your own bouquet. - Unknown

Many people have never learned to see the beauty of flowers, especially those that grow unnoticed. For instance, when you walk outside and look down at your feet, you may see tiny flowers nestled in the moss and clover hiding under a curled fern. Most people just step on them. - Erika Just

One flower makes no garland. - George Herbert

The flower fades that is not looked upon. - Edward Counsel

The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all. - Walt Disney

This very moment is a seed from which the flowers of tomorrow’s happiness grow. - Unknown

Where flowers bloom so does hope. - Lady Bird Johnson

People only send me flowers when I’m ill, or in a hospital when I’m too distracted to enjoy them. And how sad that the day I receive the most flowers I won’t even see them. Who needs flowers after you’re dead? - Unknown

What this old world needs is more bouquets handed around to folks when they are alive and kicking. Flowers don’t do a dead one much good. - Robert Elliott Gonzales

Quote Worthy

The strong man meets his crisis with the most practical tools at hand. They may not be the best tools but they are available, which is all-important. He would rather use them, such as they are, than do nothing. - Raymond Clapper

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, and be alone on earth. - Lord Bryon

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken. - Homer

Those having valour never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes. - Carl Sandburg

People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence and crudity. - Hugo Demartini

Eating

Looking for a quote on a particular subject? I have categorized the quotes to make the search easier. This 'label' - ZQuotesE - has all the quotes on subjects beginning with the Alphabet E. You might want to search the labels on the right hand side of the page too.

A cheerful look makes a dish a feast. - George Herbert

A stomach that is seldom empty despises common food. - Horace

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale. - Elsa Schiaparelli

First come, first served. - Henry Brinklow

In eating, a third of the stomach should be filled with food, a third with drink and the rest left empty. - Talmud

Man is what he eats. - Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach

No matter how developed you are in any other area of your life, no matter what you say you believe, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened you think you are, how you eat tells all. - Geneen Roth

The most important things in life happen over conversations while eating. - Geoffrey Zakarian

There is a difference between dining and eating. Dining is an art. When you eat to get most out of your meal, to please the palate, just as well as to satiate the appetite, that, my friend, is dining. - Yuan Mei

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

What you feel like eating at any given moment is what you should have. - Ferran Adria

When it comes to eating, you can sometimes help yourself more by helping yourself less. - Richard Armour

Education

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. - George Santayana

A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special. - Nelson Mandela

A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated. - Horace Mann

A man is a great bundle of tools. He is born into this life without the knowledge of how to use them. Education is the process of learning their use. - Henry Ward Beecher

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. - Theodore Roosevelt

A people uneducated is like an iron mountain whose ore is unwrought. - Henry Ward Beecher

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars. - Henry Brooks Adams

All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual’s sensibilities in relation not only to one’s fellow humans everywhere, but to all living things whatsoever. - Ashley Montagu

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education. - Sir Walter Scott

All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing. - Ellen Gilchrist

An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t. - Anatole France

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously. - Charles F. Kettering

As an apple is not in any proper sense an apple until it is ripe, so a human being is not in any proper sense a human being until he is educated. - Horace Mann

As education becomes inclusive, introspective, cosmic, promoting whole populations to power and privilege, it enthrones a vast, invisible, personal rule over the common mind. - Amos Bronson Alcott

As farmers believe it most advantageous to sow in mist, so the first seeds of education should fall in the first and thickest most of life. - Jean Paul F. Richter

Better untaught than ill-taught. - Grenville Kleiser

Children should not be coddled in their intellectual training any more than in their physical; and though the studies should be made interesting the interest should arise out of the studies themselves. - Arthur Lynch

Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track. - Emile Zola

Do not let your schooling get in the way of your education. - Mark Twain

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. - Plato    

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of little children tends towards the formation of character. - Hosea Ballou

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant. - Edward Everett

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. - Lawrence J. Peter

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. - Aristotle

Educating yourself does not mean that you were stupid in the first place; it means that you are intelligent enough to know that there is plenty left to learn. - Melanie Joy

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought. - Napoleon Hill

Education does not consist of the books read but rather the content that can be recalled. - Unknown

Education helps one cease being intimidated by strange situations. - Maya Angelou

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. - Will Durant

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. - Oscar Wilde

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. – Aristotle

Education is just a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn. - Jay

Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know. - Elmer G. Letterman

Education is not just a tool to prepare you for life; it should be part of life itself. - Unknown

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. - William Butler Yeats

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. - Albert Einstein

Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible. - Robert M. Hutchins

Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. - Ambrose Bierce

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. - Robert Frost

Education is the best provision for old age. - Aristotle

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. - Nelson Mandela

Education is the movement from darkness to light. - Allan Bloom

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. - Albert Einstein

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth. - Bertrand Russell

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. - Malcolm S. Forbes

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life. - Plato

It is only the ignorant that despise education. - Publilius Syrus

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. - Alec Bourne

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. - Aristotle

It is vital that when educating our children’s brains, that we do not neglect to educate their hearts. - Unknown

It's never enough to just tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way. - John Seely Brown

Much that passes for education is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least. - David P. Gardner

Next in importance to freedom and justice is education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained. - James Garfield 

Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators. - Amos Bronson Alcott

People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed. - Mary Wortley Montagu

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a man’s training begins; it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. - Thomas Henry Huxley

Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education. - Chuang Tzu

Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature. - Charlotte Manson

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. - Isaac Asimov

So many years of education, yet nobody ever taught us how to love ourselves and why it’s so important. - Unknown

The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community – these are the most vital things education must try to produce. - Virginia Gildersleeve

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men. - James Beattie

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living. - Wendell Phillips

The education of a man is never completed until he dies. - Robert E. Lee

The highest result of education is tolerance. - Helen Keller 

The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth. - Marilyn vos Savant

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. - Robert M. Hutchins

The roots of Education is bitter but the fruits are sweet. - Aristotle

The test and use of a man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind. - Jacques Barzun

The truly educated man will always speak to the understanding of the most unlearned of his audience. - Karl G. Maeser

The whole object of education is, or should be, to develop minds. - Sherwood Anderson

There are many things that go to make up an education, but there are just two things without which no man can ever hope to have an education and these two things are character and good manners. - Nicholas Butler

There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. - James Adams

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no education like adversity. - Benjamin Disraeli

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well. - Aristotle

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete. - Epictetus

What defeats poverty? Education. What increases net worth? Education. What helps race and ethnic relations? Education. What creates harmony and peace? Education. Re-educating people to live together and learn together is the foundation of our future economy. - Melanie Alfonso

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. - Joseph Addison

You should have education enough so that you won’t have to look up to people; and then more education so that you will be wise enough not to look down on people. - M. L. Boren

Taoism

Taoism (pronounced and also spelled Daoism is a philosophical and religious tradition that emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao. The term Tao (or Dao, depending on the romanization system used) originally means "way", "path" or "principle", and can be found in Chinese philosophies and religions other than Taoism. In Taoism, however, Tao denotes an obscure metaphysical force which is ultimately ineffable: “The Tao that can be named is not the absolute Tao.” In Taoism, the Tao is the source and essence of everything that exists.

The keystone work of literature in Taoism is the Daodejing, a concise and ambiguous book containing teachings attributed to Laozi, or "the Old Teacher". Together with the writings of Zhuangzi, these texts build the philosophical foundation of Taoism. This philosophical Taoism, individualistic by nature, is not institutionalized. Institutionalized forms, however, evolved over time in the shape of a number of different schools, often integrating beliefs and practices that even pre-dated the keystone texts – as, for example, the theories of the School of Naturalists, which synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements. Taoist schools traditionally feature reverence for Laozi, immortals or ancestors, along with a variety of divination and exorcism rituals, and practices for achieving ecstasy, longevity or immortality.

Taoist propriety and ethics may vary depending on the particular school, but in general tends to emphasize wu wei (action through non-action), simplicity, spontaneity, harmony between the individual and the cosmos (天人相应), and the Three Treasures: Compassion, Moderation, and Humility.

Taoism has had profound influence on Chinese culture in the course of the centuries, and clerics of institutionalised Taoism usually take care to note distinction between their ritual tradition and the customs and practices found in Chinese folk religion as these distinctions sometimes appear blurred. Chinese alchemy, Chinese astrology, Zen Buddhism, several martial arts, Traditional Chinese medicine, feng shui, and many styles of qigong have been intertwined with Taoism throughout history. Beyond China, Taoism also had influence on surrounding societies in Asia.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Taoism shows a way to return to Ultimate Reality.

Morality is the first essential in the training for immortality. Then the trainee should meditate on the void. Once he is in mediation, he unites his mind with his breath, and eliminates all emotions and all cares, and just focuses on the void. The void means that which is before anything came into being; it is the primordial of the extreme. Returning to the void means returning to the primordial origin, returning to the primordial nature. - Wu Chong Xu

Taoism teaches the attainment of immortality by merging with Tao.

“Taoism – from the word tao, literally meaning ‘the way’. It teaches us we must all find a place for ourselves in the natural way of things that does not disrupt the function of the whole. When we accept our place in the world, we become more concerned for the consequences of our actions, since for every action there is a reaction, and everything we do has a consequence for others.”

Quote Worthy

We all have our 'good old days' tucked away inside our hearts, and we return to them in daydreams like cats to favourite armchairs. - Brian Carter

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults. - Socrates

  

We educate one another; and we cannot do this if half of us consider the other half not good enough to talk to. - George Bernard Shaw

He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stolen, Let him not know’t, and he’s not robb’d at all. - William Shakespeare

Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge. - William Shakespeare

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailor so inexorable as one’s self! - Nathaniel Hawthorne

When you are an anvil, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill. - George Herbert

We have to do the best we know how at the moment; If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along. - Franklin Roosevelt

Couple In Their Nineties

Couple in their nineties are both having problems remembering things. During a check-up, the doctor tells them that they're physically okay, but they might want to start writing things d own to help them remember.

Later that night, while watching TV, the old man gets up from his chair. "Want anything while I'm in the kitchen?" he asks.

"Will you get me a bowl of ice cream?"

"Sure."

"Don't you think you should write it down so you can remember it?" she asks.

"No, I can remember it."

"Well, I'd like some strawberries on top, too.  Maybe you should write it down, so's not to forget it?"

He says, "I can remember that. You want a bowl of ice cream with strawberries."

"I'd also like whipped cream.  I'm certain you'll forget that, write it down?" she asks.

Irritated, he says, "I don't need to write it down, I can remember it! Ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream - I got it, for goodness sake!"

Then he toddles into the kitchen. After about 20 minutes,

The old man returns from the kitchen and hands his wife a plate of bacon and eggs. She stares at the plate for a moment, then says, "Where's my toast?"

Focus

A negative focus can result in our entirely missing the possibilities placed in our path. - Anne Wilson Schaef

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. - Alexander Graham Bell

Concentration is the secret of strengths in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Focus is the key to accomplish what is necessary – easy word to spell, it contains only five letters but it is probably one of the most powerful words there are in order to move forward with confidence and with the expected results. - Byron Pulsifer

Focusing isn’t just an optical activity, it is also a mental one. - Bridget Riley

If you focus on the possible when you experience difficult situations, YOU CAN positively change your outlook, reduce your stress, and concentrate on achieving things that otherwise may not have been possible. - Catherine Pulsifer

Instead of focusing on how much you can accomplish, focus on how much you can absolutely love what you’re doing. - Leo Babauta

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. - Aristotle Onassis

It was better to focus on the good and what we had than to focus on what we had lost and were losing. - Paul and Tracey McManus

Keep focused on the substantive issues. To make a decision means having to go through one door and closing all others. - Abraham Zaleznik

Since you need to push yourself to follow a new set of habits, you need to keep your focus on your objectives. You need to remind your mind of your main reason to adopt these new habits. - Kenneth J Hutchins

Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals. - Winifred Gallagher

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. - Steve Jobs

The sun’s energy warms the world. But when you focus it through a magnifying glass it can start a fire. Focus is so powerful! - Alan Pariser

To focus means to bring your attention to the centre, to concentrate on one thing intently in order to gain clarity. - Cheryl Richardson

We often need an outside source to show us our need for an adjustment in focus, and when we finally acknowledge our need, the truth presents the wonderful ability to see clearly again - Ben Baughman

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days? - Dave Grohl

When you stay focused and keep a commitment you create momentum, and momentum creates momentum. - Rich Fettke

Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed. - Paulo Coelho

You are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun’s rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains. - Jeffrey Pfeffer

Your destiny is to fulfil those things upon which you focus most intently. So, choose to keep your focus on that which is truly magnificent, beautiful, uplifting and joyful. Your life is always moving toward something. - Ralph Marston

Quote Worthy

Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know. - Louisa May Alcott

Do what you can – with what you have – where you are. - Theodore Roosevelt

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. - Tony Robbins

It is what we do easily and what we like to do that we do well. - Orison Swett Marden

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. - Og Mandino

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. - John Wooden

Just do what you love and believe in, and success will come naturally. - David Frost

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. - Calvin Coolidge

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. - Lord Chesterfield Stanhope

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. - Dorothy Parker

Effort

All effort is in the last analysis sustained by the faith that it is worth making. - Ordway Tead

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. - Winston Churchill

Don't put in half of the effort unless you're okay with half of the results. - Unknown

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. - Napoleon Hill

I believe that persistent effort, supported by a character-based foundation, will enable you to get more of the things money will buy and all of the things money won’t buy. - Zig Ziglar

I have always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I did not have a chance to win. - Arnold Palmer

In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results; and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. - James Allen

Never think of any right effort as being fruitless -- all right effort bears good fruit, whether we see results or not. - Unknown

The one thing that matters is the effort. - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, you cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation. - Plato

Food

Food – what is chosen from the possibilities available, how it is presented, how it is eaten, with whom and when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating it – is one of the means by which a society creates itself and acts out its aims and fantasies. - Margaret Visser

Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence. - Donald Barthelme

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. - Virginia Woolf

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live. - Socrates

There is no love sincerer than the love of food. - George Bernard Shaw

We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy. - William Osler

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison. - Lucretius

While weight loss is important, what’s more important is the quality of food you put in your body – food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes. - Mark Hyman

Fasting Of The Heart

Yen Hui: What is fasting of the heart?

Confucius: The goal of fasting is inner unity. This means hearing, but not with the ear; hearing, but not with the understanding; hearing with the spirit, with your whole being... The hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or to the mind. Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind. Fasting of the heart empties the faculties, frees you from limitation and from preoccupation. Fasting of the heart begets unity and freedom.

Yen Hui: I see. What was standing in my way was my own self-awareness. If I can begin this fasting of the heart, self awareness will vanish.

Quote Worthy

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face. - Eleanor Roosevelt

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn’t there. - Thomas Hardy

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content. - Helen Keller

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest. - Philip Gilbert Hamerton

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life. - Etty Hilsum

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. - Lou Holtz 

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre. - Uta Hagen

To get profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work, is as impossible as it is to live without being born. - A. P. Gouthev

Fools

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - Douglas Adams

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him. - Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does. - Marilyn vos Savant

A fool must now and then be right, by chance. - William Cowper

A fool will be exposed to all as soon as he opens his mouth, but when he learns to guard his tongue, he will be considered wise. - Unknown

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.  - Moliere

A man who tells you he's no fool has his suspicions. - Ken Alstad

An erudite fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool. - Jean Baptiste Moliere

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do. - Dale Carnegie

As a fish out of his native element, so is the fool in the society of the wise. - William Scott Downey

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed. - Edward Young

Better to listen to the wind ... than to waste time with the words of a fool. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Even a fool learns something once it hits him. - Homer

Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool. - Aesop

Fools and scissors require good handling. - Japanese Proverb

Fools are like other folks as long as they are silent. - Danish Proverb

Fools are very often found united in the strictest intimacy, as the lighter kinds of wood can be the most closely glued together. - Eliza Cook

Fool’s haste is no speed. - Unknown

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. - Alexander Pope

Give a fool enough rope and he will hang himself. - Unknown

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach. - Plutarch

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. - Jim Elliott

He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly. - Eliza Cook

He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes, but he who never asks a question remains a fool forever. - Tom J. Connelly

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. - Carl Gustav Jung

If you follow a fool, you are a fool yourself. - Jamaican Proverb

It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. - William Shakespeare

It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf its confessor. - Italian Proverb

It is a fool's privilege to laugh at an intelligent man. - Jean de la Bruyere

It is a fool's sheep that breaks loose twice. - West African Proverb

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. - Mark Twain

It’s better to be thought of as a fool and to surprise people once in a while than to be thought of as a brain and to let people down when they need you the most. - Julie Melanson

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. - Voltaire

Learned fools are the greatest of all fools. - German Proverb

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage. - Pulilius Syrus

Like gold in the hands of a savage are the sayings of wisdom in the mouth of a fool. - Edward Counsel

Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

No fools are so troublesome as those who have some wit. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Only a fool hates that which he knows nothing about. - Unknown

Only a fool tests the depth of water with both feet. - Unknown

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. - Alice Walker

The best way to convince a fool he is wrong is to let him have his way. - Josh Billings

The fool who is aware of his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but the fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed. - Unknown

The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live. - Epicurus

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools. - Nicolas Chamfort

Those who realize their folly are not true fools. - Chuang Tzu

While intelligent people can often simplify the complex, a fool is more likely to complicate the simple. - Gerald W. Grummet

You are not a fool just because you have done something foolish – only if the folly of it escapes you. - Jim Fiebig

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. - Abraham Lincoln

You can’t separate a fool from their foolishness. You got to separate yourself from that fool. - Unknown

Young men think old men are fools – old men know young men to be so. - George Chapman