Take Your Time Quotes

“A mind that is racing over worries about the future or recycling resentments from the past is ill equipped to handle the challenges of the moment. By slowing down, we can train the mind to focus completely in the present. Then we will find that we can function well whatever the difficulties. That is what it means to be stress-proof: not avoiding stress but being at our best under pressure, calm, cool, and creative in the midst of the storm.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“All negative thoughts – anger, fear, passion, compulsive craving -- tend to be fast. If we could see the mind when it is caught in such thoughts, we would really see it racing. But positive thoughts like love, patience, tenderness, compassion, and understanding are slow - not turbulent, rushing brooks of thinking, so to speak but broad rivers that are calm, clear, and deep.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“Attention can be trained very naturally, with affection, just as you train a puppy. When something distracts your attention, you say “Come back” and bring it back again. With a lot of training, you can teach your mind to come running back to you when you call, just like a friendly pup.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“….You are an exalted creature, with a spark of the divine within you that nothing you do can extinguish; and you have been granted life in order to give, because it is in giving that we receive....”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“To love, we need to be sensitive to those around us, which is impossible if we are racing through life engrossed in all the things we need to do before sunset. In fact, I would go to the extent of saying that a person who is always late will find it difficult to love; he will be in too much of a hurry.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“Children naturally ask all kinds of questions and take a long time to tell their stories, and in millions of homes the parents are doing something else as they reply, “Yes, yes, I see.” And in millions of homes, the parents are surprised when their children don’t listen to them.
Those little bright eyes know when your attention is wandering. When they are telling you the news from school, give your full attention. Everything else can be set aside for the moment. You are teaching your children to listen to you.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“Make wise choices about what you read. Read only what is necessary or worthwhile. And then take the time to read carefully. One book read with concentration and reflected upon is worth a hundred flashed through without any absorption at all.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“Meditation is the basis of a life of splendid health, untiring energy, unfailing love, and abiding wisdom. It is the very foundation of that deep inner peace for which every one of us longs. No human being can ever be satisfied by money or success or prestige or anything else the world can offer. What we are really searching for is not something that satisfies us temporarily, but a permanent state of joy.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“When we do things with only a part of the mind, we are just skimming the surface of life. Nothing sinks in; nothing has real impact. It leads to an empty feeling inside. Unfortunately, it is this very emptiness that drives us to pack in even more, seeking desperately to fill the void in our hearts. What we need to do is just the opposite: to slow down and live completely in the present. Then every moment will be full.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“The Buddha said, “When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit. Don’t wobble.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“We expect professional and financial success to require time and effort. Why do we take success in our relationships for granted? Why should we expect harmony to come naturally just because we are in love?”
― eknath easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“Doing something else while we eat is such a common habit today that no one even questions it. If you go to a restaurant in the business district at lunchtime, you will see any number of hurried executives lunching off the Wall Street Journal. You can watch as one morsel of salad is consumed and then one morsel of Journal. That is poor eating and poor business practice, too.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“In the long run – I am anticipating many years of training attention – you won’t think about the past at all. It is not that you cannot remember the past; you just don’t think about it. You won’t think about the future, either: not that you don’t plan for the future, but you are not entangled in what it will bring. You live one hundred percent in the present – which means you are one hundred percent alive.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Training the senses does not mean denying them or depriving them. It means educating them not to demand things that will cost us in health, security, or freedom. In training the senses, we don’t forfeit anything in life of lasting value.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Training the mind to be patient and calm under all circumstances, then, often begins with learning to wear our likes and dislikes loosely, casually, like a favorite old sweater.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Pleasure comes and it goes. When it goes, we don’t need to cling to memories of past happiness or dwell on when it may come again. When we turn to the past in yearning, we are running away from the present. When we propel ourselves into the future in anticipation, we are running away from the present. This is the secret of what the world’s spiritual traditions call detachment: if we don’t cling to past or future, we live entirely here and now, in “Eternity’s sunrise.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“According to yoga philosophy, the human personality is a constant interplay of these three elements – inertia, energy, and harmony. All three are always present, but one tends to be dominant at any given time – in a day, throughout a stage of life, over a life itself”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“don’t care who wins. It is of no consequence to me who gets the cup and who doesn’t. What I enjoy is seeing these great players equally challenged, because it brings out the best in each of them.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Nobody is upsetting you. Nothing is upsetting you. You get upset because you are upsettable.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Trying to get through life without control over your attention is a little like trying to reach a destination with no control over your car.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“The schedule was always tight, but he was never in a hurry. Not once, then or since, did I see him pressured into speeding up to get more done in the time available. By his example, he was constantly teaching what he knew from experience: the most effective way to accomplish a lot is to do one thing at a time and do it well.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

“Every human heart has a deep need to love - to be in love, really, with all of life. This is the kind of love that comes when the mind is still. . . . Be still and know that we are all God’s children; then you will be in love with all.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning