Sunbeams

You don’t tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds.

Richard Bach, Illusions

The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on the awakening of our faith in the future.

Teilhard de Chardin

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do what you must do, and do it well: and then pass quickly to do that which you dare not.

Jeremy Slocombe, The Cosmic Hobo

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Erica long

The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than flaws in the system. God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself on the blood of sinners. But God also knows that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.

William Sloane Coffin, The Courage to Love

“Yes,” he said, “the cross is a good symbol to describe those two aspects of time. The vertical bar of the cross represents the eternal aspect of time, and the horizontal bar the aspect of passing time. Where the two bars cross, it is possible to see both times at once, the flashes of deep understanding that we have come from that point. But there is something else to consider. When we do not first accept things as they are, we are almost bound to want to change them by imposing our concept on perfection. We are working for our own selfish desires, from our egos. In a sense, we create another sort of time, imposed on that which is already perfect in essence.”

Reshad Feild, The Invisible Way

The whole world’s so busy being its brother’s keeper, it’s forgotten that until you learn how to be your brother’s brother you will never keep him well.

Dick Gregory

In the evaluation of the dominant moods of any historical period it is important to hold fast to the fact that there are always islands of self-sufficient order — on farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters — where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives: as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

Erik Erikson

I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.

S.J. Perelman

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them back; and then you destroy yourself.

Richard M. Nixon

One is not born a woman, one becomes one.

Simone De Beauvoir

To the extent that most of us are users and consumers of energy and of a certain style of life we are covertly giving the go-ahead to our government to protect those things for us. We must realize that inherent in every time you turn on the ignition of your car or climb into a jet plane, you are in some way part of a chain of reinforcing six percent of the world that’s using about fifty percent of the natural resources. And that’s not fair. We can’t play “King of the Mountain” much longer. We’re not respected by any of the poor people of the world at this point, because our humanitarian concerns have been overridden by our fear of loss of our “King of the Mountain” status.

Ram Dass

If it happens that you are well off, in your heart be tranquil about it — if you can be just as glad and willing for the opposite condition. So let it be with food, friends, kindred, or anything else that God gives or takes away.

Meister Eckhart

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.

D.H. Lawrence

As you grow older, you’ll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends.

Joy Williams

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Proverbs, The Bible

A sight of happiness is happiness.

Thomas Traherne

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden