"You only lose what you cling to."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher."
— Pema Chödrön

"You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself."
— Alan Wilson Watts

"If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."
— Dalai Lama XIV (The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality)

"If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism."
— Albert Einstein

"A man is not called wise because he talks and talks again; but if he is peaceful, loving and fearless then he is in truth called wise."
— Siddhārtha Gautama (The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha)

"People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further."
— Pema Chödrön

"Purity or impurity depends on oneself,
No one can purify another."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind."
— Daisaku Ikeda (The Human Revolution)

"Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux. Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative. While conservatism and self-protection might be likened to winter, night, and death, the spirit of pioneering and attempting to realize ideals evokes images of spring, morning, and birth."
— Daisaku Ikeda

"'Emotional states are fairly quick bursts of neuronal gossip. Traits, on the other hand, are more like the neuronal equivalent of committed relationships.'"
— Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

"We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out."
— Paul Newman

"Suffering is caused by craving."
— Four Noble Truths

" Through countless births in the cycle of existence
I have run, not finding
although seeking the builder of this house;
and again and again I faced the suffering of new birth.
Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen.

You shall not build a house again for me.
All your beams are broken,
the ridgepole is shattered.
The mind has become freed from conditioning:
the end of craving has been reached."
— Siddhārtha Gautama (The Dhammapada)

"All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived."
— Kim Stanley Robinson (Sixty Days and Counting)

"Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else."
— Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)

"Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"We live thinking I am right, I am wise. Herein lies the cause of human delusion."
— Ko Kamei

"A boddhisattva is someone who is on the way to becoming a buddha. All of us become boddhisattvas as soon as we start to take our Zen work seriously and the work we do contributes to creating a world in which all good actions become more efficacious."
— David Brazier

"Many do not realize that we here must die. For those who realize this, quarrels end."
— Dhammapada, vs. 5 - 6

"The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself."
— Thich Nhat Hanh (Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment)

"Children I implore you
get out of the burning house now
three carts wait outside
to save you from a homeless life
relax in the village square
before the sky everything's empty
no direction is better or worse
east is just as good as west
those who know the meaning of this
are free to go where they want"
— Han-shan

"If while on your way you meet no one your equal or better, steadily continue on your way alone. There is no fellowship with fools."
— Dhammapada, v. 61

"O snail
Climb Mount Fuji
But slowly, slowly!"
— Kobayashi Issa

"Christianity and Buddhism are a lot alike, especially Buddhism."
— C.S. Lewis

"Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.
"
— Chogyam Trunkpa Rinpoche

""Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be acheived unless we first establish peace within our own minds. We can send so-called 'peacekeeping forces' into areas of conflict, but peace cannot be oppossed from the outside with guns. Only by creating peace within our own mind and helping others to do the same can we hope to achieve peace in this world.""
— Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey)

"Where there are people, there are flies...and Buddhas."
— Issa

"Whereever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear."
— Shunryu Suzuki

"If you want to take care of tomorrow, take better care of today. We always live now. All we have to do is entrust ourselves to the life we now live."
— Dainin Katagiri

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment."
— Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai)

"I'd like to divide
myself in order to see,
among these mountains,
each and every flower
of every cherry tree."
— Saigyo

"Now seen...now gone,
The butterfly flits in and out
Through fence-hung flowers;
But a life lived so close to them
I envy...though it's here and gone."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)

"Tightly held by rocks
Through winter, the ice today
Begins to come undone:
A way-seeker also is the water,
Melting, murmuring from the moss."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)

"Attachment to one's own belief,
Aversion for another's view: all this is thought."
— Chandrakiriti

"

"You tell me to stand still, but I am not walking," he shouted, "whereas you who are walking say you are still. How is it that you are standing still but I am not?"

The Buddha turned round. "My legs move but my mind is still," he said. "Your legs are still but your mind moves all the time in a fire of anger, hatred, and feverish desire. Therefore, I am still but you are not."

"
— -Majjhima Nikaya

"The eternity of "anytime" shines in this moment "now" while the unlimitedness of "anyplace" is manifested in the limits of "here." When the universality of "anyone" dances out in the individual "I," for the first time you have the world of Zen."
— Omori Sogen (An Introduction to Zen Training: A Translation of Sanzen Nyumon)

"the golden eternity is { }"
— Jack Kerouac (The Scripture of the Golden Eternity)

"Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen."
— Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)

"Limitations gone:
Since my mind fixed on the moon,
Clarity and serenity
Make something for which
There's no end in sight."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)

"Returning to where
It used to see blossoms,
My mind, changed,
Will stay on at Yoshino...
Home now, and see anew."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)

"Last year, Yoshino,
I walked away bending branches
To point me to blossoms--
Which now are everywhere and I can
Go where I've never been before."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)

"Today's satori:
Such a change of mind would
Not exist without
My lifelong habit of having
My mind immersed in blossoms."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)

"Beyond this life and
This world I'll have it til
My heart's content:
The bright moon that passed over
The horizon before I had my fill."
— Saigyo (Mirror for the Moon)