Waterlearner > Waterlearner's Quotes

“The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“But memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“What if I travel so far away in my dreams that I can't get back in time to wake up?”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist ? It feels like it exists, but where is it ? And if it did exists, but doesn’t now, then where did it go ?”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Yes," I told her. "I'm angry, so what?"

..... I went on, giving her an executive summary of my crappy life.

....

"So of course I feel angry," I said angrily. "What do you expect? It was a stupid thing to ask."

"Yes," she agreed. "It was a stupid thing to ask. I see that you're angry. I don't need to ask such a stupid thing to understand that."

"So why did you ask?"

Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she was facing me, "I asked for you," she said.

"For me?"

So you could hear the answer.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stuff that old Jiko could do, like moving superslow, or reading people's minds, or appearing in doorways, or making people feel okay about themselves by just being there.”
― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm.”
― Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

“because we have two legs and travelling on foot is the right speed for human beings. Walking sorts out your problems and anxieties, and calms your worries. Living from day to day, from inspiration to inspiration, much of what I have learned as a Jain has come from wandering. Sometimes, even my dreams are of walking.”
― William Dalrymple, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

“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

“If you're determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so.”
― Yongey Mingyur, Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom

“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”
― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness

“Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

“Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

“Blame keeps us stuck in the past. Responsibility paves the path for a better future.”
― Marilee Adams, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work

“The only good human being is a dead one.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm