I am always a competitor and my wife and son have never seen me wrestle.
I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play, but in the spiritual arena there are people who are even closer to me than that.
When nothing upsets you, you are at the beginning of the path. When you desire nothing, you are halfway on the path; when nothing becomes everything, you are perfected.
Love has to spring spontaneously from within And it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; But though love cannot be forced on anyone, It can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self communicative; Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible, And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, Until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.
Difficulties give us the opportunity to prove our greatness by overcoming them.
In the spiritual life it is not necessary to have a complete map of the path in order to begin traveling. On the contrary, having such complete knowledge may actually hinder rather than help the onward march. The deeper secrets of spiritual life are unraveled to those who take risks and who make bold experiments with it. They are not meant for the idler who seeks guarantees at every step. Those who speculate from the shore about the ocean shall know only its surface, but those who would know the depths of the ocean must be willing to plunge into it.
No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.
Happiness is the cessation of suffering.
Don't do to someone else what you wouldn't want done to you.
I think we have not done a good job of explaining to people in rural America what is actually happening, number one. And, number two, we're not expressing appreciation and acknowledging the contribution that rural America makes. Where does your food come from? Where does the water come from? Where does the energy feedstock come from? It all comes from rural areas. Where does your military come from? Nearly 35 to 40 percent of the military is from 15 percent of America's population living in rural America. It makes a tremendous contribution to this country. It just isn't recognized.
The realist sees reality as concrete. The optimist sees reality as clay.