Carolyn Heppner > Carolyn's Quotes

“And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
― Confucius

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.”
― David Whyte, The House of Belonging

“When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up on all other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. ”
― David Whyte

“I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing.”
― David Whyte

“You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
Except the one in which you belong.”
― David Whyte

“The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears”
― David Whyte

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

“Compassion is a verb.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

“If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

“Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living

“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

“I have noticed that people are dealing too much with the negative, with what is wrong. ... Why not try the other way, to look into the patient and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
― Pema Chodron

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.

[Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65]”
― Gautama Buddha, Die Reden Des Buddha Aus Dem Ang�ttaranikaya; Aus Dem Pali Zum Ersten Male �bers. Und Erl�utert Von Myanatiloka

“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.”
― Dhammapada, The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
― Alan Watts

“It is like a lighted torch whose flame can be distributed to ever so many other torches which people may bring along; and therewith they will cook food and dispel darkness, while the original torch itself remains burning ever the same. It is even so with the bliss of the Way.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni, The Sutra Of The Forty-Two Sections

“Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“These... things, householder, are welcome, agreeable, pleasant, & hard to obtain in the world:

Long life is welcome, agreeable, pleasant, & hard to obtain in the world.

Beauty is welcome, agreeable, pleasant, & hard to obtain in the world.

Happiness is welcome, agreeable, pleasant, & hard to obtain in the world.

Status is welcome, agreeable, pleasant, & hard to obtain in the world.

...Now, I tell you, these... things are not to be obtained by reason of prayers or wishes. If they were to be obtained by reason of prayers or wishes, who here would lack them? It's not fitting for the disciple of the noble ones who desires long life to pray for it or to delight in doing so. Instead, the disciple of the noble ones who desires long life should follow the path of practice leading to long life. In so doing, he will attain long life...

[Ittha Sutta, AN 5.43]”
― Buddha

“To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds.”
― William F. Buckley

“Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.”
― William F. Buckley Jr.

“Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them”
― William F. Buckley