Whatever authority I may have rests solely on knowing how little I know.

Socrates

Discipline doesn’t have to be about restriction, it can be about freedom, it can be about openness, it can be about more rather than less.

Batya Zamir

If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. I am the only real truth I know.

Jean Rhys

People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn themselves into beasts; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights.

Montaigne

You are a god only insofar as you recognize yourself as a man.

Inscription by which ancient Athenians welcomed the conquering armies of Pompey the Great

Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.

Rebecca West

Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.

Marilyn Monroe

We may not exaggerate the future threats and dangers, but we do exaggerate the present and actual state of this global nation — underestimate the degree to which it is still surviving and accessible to those who want to experience it. It is far less nature itself that is yet in true danger than our attitude toward it.

John Fowles

Martyrdom . . . is the negation of any spiritual value, because martyrdom is suffering turned in on the self in glamour and glorification for what a person is going through.

David Spangler

Smart shopping does not involve collecting a lot of information, but a true appreciating of each individual object.

Chögyam Trungpa

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

George Bernard Shaw

Though clear waters range to the vast blue autumn sky,
How can they compare with the hazy moon on a Spring night!
Most people want to have pure clarity,
But sweep as you will, you cannot empty the mind.

Keizan Zenji

It isn’t true that contemporary attitudes and values have changed. What’s true is that we’re searching desperately to change them.

Gene Youngblood

Eighty per cent of life is just showing up.

Woody Allen