Vladimir > Vladimir's Quotes

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― Mark Twain

“The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
― Seneca the Younger

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”
― Peter Drucker

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
― Chinese Proverb

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
― Chinese Proverb

“Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* for trouble.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“If you want to cure a neurosis, you have to risk something.”2”
― James Hollis, Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times

“A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you.”
― Harold Ramis

“Happiness is the abscence of the striving for happiness.”
― Chuang Tzu

“If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.”
― Chuang Tzu

“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.”
― Erich Fromm

“All the causes, all the conditions of satori are in the mind; they are merely waiting for the maturing. [...] From the very beginning nothing has been kept from you, all that you wished to see has been there all the time before you, it was only yourself that closed the eye to the fact. Therefore, there is in Zen nothing to explain, nothing to teach, that will add to your knowledge. Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only a borrowed plumage.”
― D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

“A path is made by walking on it.”
― Chuang Tzu

“I regard the discovery of one’s favorite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”
― Zhuangzi, Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters

“My dog doesn’t worry about the meaning of life.”
― Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love & Work

“There is a strange attitude and feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being one is doing this or that, but whether it is a woman or a job, it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about. If this attitude is prolonged, it means a constant inner refusal to commit oneself to the moment. With this there is often, to a smaller or greater extent, a savior complex, with the secret thought that one day one will be able to save the world; the last word in philosophy, or religion, or politics, or art, or something else, will be found.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensees

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
― Mark Twain

“No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the further it runs away from you. It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow. You run after it and it runs with you at the identical rate of speed.”
― D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“If you think the anima as being "nothing but" what you know about her, you have not the receptiveness of a listening attitude, and so she becomes "nothing but" a load of brutal emotions; you have never given her a chance of expressing herself, and therefore she has become inhuman and brutal.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales

“To insist on a spiritual practice that served you in the past is to carry the raft on your back after you have crossed the river.”
― Gautama Buddha

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.”
― Anthony de Mello

“As the Arabs say, "The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.”
― Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

“Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.” But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness