“What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it – would you be likely to give them another?”

The more vividly you consider how you want your world to be, the more real and effective tools you will have for making it so.

The more closely you get in touch with your dreams, the more able you are to make them real.

If you could make the world exactly to your liking, consider very specifically just how that world would be. If you could spend your time doing precisely what you wish, how would the moments of your life be lived?

Don’t lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations.

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing – just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?

You’ve done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination.

Excellence is not a skill, it’s an attitude.

Dare to visualize a world in which your most treasured dreams have become true.

Put your energy into building what is creative, valuable and empowering. And you won’t have to constantly fight against what is destructive and draining.

If you so choose, the challenges can make you stronger. If you so choose, the disappointments can make you more determined.

It doesn’t matter how much you want. What really matters is how much you want it. The extent and complexity of the problem does not matter was much as does the willingness to solve it.

To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return.

Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.

There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.

Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality.

If you so choose, even the unexpected setbacks can bring new and positive possibilities. If you so choose, you can find value and fulfillment in every circumstance.

Regarding this Dhamma, it is not something that we can simply talk about or take another’s word for it.

Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer.

For this occurs just as clay is first molded into one, then shaped into another form, for the Devil is a potter and his witches are but clay.

We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another’s explanation our defilements will disappear.

The forms of the world have their place, but in another way, there is nothing there. To be free, we need to respect both of these truths.

I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.

If you think that people should be nice to one another, then by all means be nice. But when you project that belief onto the people and the world around you as if it were an objective reality, or worse still.

Another one is Eric Clapton. Another one is Phil Collins. Eminem, Kanye West I like all those people.