Love

Love is something eternal – the aspects may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it is a good lamp, but now it is shedding light, too, and that is its real function. - Vincent van Gogh 

Around us lies the world. Pass out into it with hatred in your heart and, by the operation of a law as immutable as that of gravity, you will encounter strife, bitterness, and shame. Pass out into the same world with love in your hear, love everything you meet, no matter how degraded it may appear, or how far removed from the possibility of love, let your love rest upon all, even as the sun touches everything with the infinite charity of its beams, and all the world will blossom like a rose. What need has the world but love? If love were a living thing in the heart of every man, what use were the laws written in statue books? Heaven's only law is love. - Unknown

When you love somebody, you should follow your heart. Sometimes when you are with the person you love the most, you feel confused. You don’t know who you are or what you want but that is totally understandable. It is natural to let go of a part of yourself to be with that person but the important part is that you don’t lose your own identity in the process! - Unknown

Quote Worthy

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. - Thomas Paine

Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvellous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected? - Pliny The Elder

The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. - Charles Colton 

One of the best ways to educate our hearts is to look at our interaction with other people, because our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. - Stephen R. Covey

Be not too presumptuously sure in any business; for things of this world depend on such a train of unseen chances that if it were in man’s hands to set the tables, still he would not be certain to win the game. - George Herbert

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody. - Albert Camus

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself. - Marcus Aurelius 

Sogyal Rinpoche

Sogyal Rinpoche - a world-renowned Buddhist teacher from Tibet 

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. . . . Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humour, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions. . . . The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are. . . . The more you listen, the more guidance you will receive. If you follow the voice of your wise guide . . . and let the ego fall silent, you come to experience that presence of wisdom and joy and bliss that you really are. - Sogyal Rinpoche 

When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don't actually "become" a Buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a Buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being. - Sogyal Rinpoche 

Benevolence - Quotes

Benevolence is a world of itself – a world which mankind, as yet, have hardly begun to explore. We have, as it were, only skirted along its coasts for a few leagues, without penetrating the recesses, or gathering the riches of its vast interior. - Horace Mann

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. - C. S. Lewis

How quickly a truly benevolent act is repaid by the consciousness of having done it. - Hosea Ballou

The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous. - Maria Edgeworth

Food For Thought

Going far beyond the call of duty, doing more than others expect… this is what excellence is all about. And it comes from striving, maintaining the highest standards, looking after the smallest detail, and going the extra mile. Excellence means doing your very best – in everything, in every way. - Unknown

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. It is overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt. - Unknown

Heaven on earth is happening simultaneously with the way our lives are showing up, right now in this moment. The trick is to be able to access this coexisting state, day in, day out, moment-by-moment, not just when in pleasant, ideal circumstances. - Unknown  

Tap on the Shoulder

              A passenger in a taxi heading leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

              The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate window.

              For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver said, "Are you OK? I'm so sorry, but you scared the daylights out of me."

              The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, "I didn't realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly."

              The driver replied, "No, no, I'm the one who is sorry, it's entirely my fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab. I've been driving a hearse for 25 years."

Betrayal - Quotes

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Be certain that he who has betrayed thee once will betray thee again. - Johann Caspar Lavater

Betray a friend, and you'll often find you have ruined yourself. - Aesop

Betrayal does that – betrays the betrayer. - Erica Jong

Each betrayal begins with trust. - Phish

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation. - Joseph Conrad

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall. - Robert Graves

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal. - Tennessee Williams

When one does another person an injustice, in some mysterious way it does one good to discover (or to persuade oneself) that the injured party has also behaved badly or unfairly in some little matter or other; it is always a relief to the conscience if one can apportion some measure of guilt to the person one has betrayed. - Stefan Zweig

On Friendship

A true friendship always tells us that we are acceptable and accepted. This we all need to know. We have a need to be accepted not for any special quality, not for any grand achievement but simply for ourselves. - Unknown

Deep friendship develops through mutual caring and interest in each other’s well being. Friendship based on competition to show who is better can only exist on the golf course. - Unknown

As we experience acceptance in a friendship, we come to know that someone sees values in us. Being valued by someone who counts is the first step toward valuing oneself. - Unknown

A friendship that is sincere and true gives joy like nothing else will do; that is why glad hearts look up and send a prayer of thanks for faithful friends. - Unknown

The delight of honest friendship is that it can be resumed instantly regardless of the length of time it has been in abeyance; there are no preliminaries or formalities to observe, no protocol to be established. - Unknown

The miracle of friendship can be spoken without words, hearing unspoken needs, recognizing secret dreams, understanding the silent things that only true friends know. - Unknown

Birds - Quotes

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. - Lou Holtz

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. - Latin Proverb

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness. - Alejandro Jodorowsky

Birds of a feather will gather together. - Robert Burton

Birds of fine plumage are not the best songsters; neither are comely women the most virtuous. - William Scott Downey  

If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. - Charles Lindbergh

Each bird must sing with his own throat. - Henrik Ibsen

Fine feathers make fine birds. - Unknown

Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.  - Miguel de Cervantes

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. - William Blake 

The early bird catches the worm. - William Camden 

The wren and the nightingale sound nothing alike, but think how dull the world would be without the songs of both birds. - Kirby Larson

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. - Robert Wilson Lynd

Tie two birds together and although they have four wings, they cannot fly. - Unknown

Quote Worthy

Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver. - Barbara De Angelis 

Overcoming fear and worry can be accomplished by living a day at a time or even a moment at a time. Your worries will be cut down to nothing. - Dr. Robert Anthony

Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. - Robert Luis Stevenson

You cannot run away from a weakness, you must sometime fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand. - Robert Luis Stevenson

Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best. - Sydney Smith

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man. - George Bernard Shaw

The loftiness of understanding embraces all. It requires as much spirit to suffer the failings of others as it does to appreciate their good qualities. - Magdeleine Sable

To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it – but we must sail and not drift, nor lie at anchor. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom? - Thich Nhat Hanh