“Extend an act of kindness each day. No one has to know. It can be a smile, reassuring words, a small favor – without expecting something in return.”

Nothing is wrong – whatever is happening is just “real life.”

Sometimes the easiest way to appreciate ourselves is by looking through the eyes of someone who loves us.

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

There are some things we can’t choose, but in being present we can choose how we want to relate to them.

Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.

Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

Relaxation is the doorway to both wisdom and compassion.

The two wings of mindfulness and kindness will begin to open the heart to more connection with our world.

When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.

As we free ourselves from the suffering of ‘something is wrong with me, ‘we trust and express the fullness of who we are.’

Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.

Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else is the perhaps most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.

Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.

The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.

Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.

We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.

Wisdom means understanding without any doubt that circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they may. People behave as they will.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.

Love and hope can conquer hate.

Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.

You cannot plant an acorn in the morning, and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.

The secret to happiness is having low expectations.

Act without expectation.