The play-it-safe pessimists of the world never accomplish much of anything, because they don’t look clearly and objectively at situations, they don’t recognize or believe in their own abilities to overcome even the smallest amount of risk.
BENJAMIN HOFFThe masters of life know the way, for they listen to the voice within them, the voice of wisdom and simplicity, the voice that reasons beyond cleverness and knows beyond knowledge.
More Benjamin Hoff Quotes
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Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That’s why I remember things so well.
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The Eeyore Educational System sees childhood as a waste of time, a luxury that society cannot afford . . . Put children in school at the earliest age possible; load them down with homework; take away their time, their creativity, their play, their power; then plug them into machines.
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A way of life that keeps saying ‘Around the next corner, above the next step,’ works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.
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Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, ‘This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,’ and trying harder to make it happen some other way.
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Whether many people realize it yet or not, man, the Inferior Animal, has by now proved himself incapable of keeping his own species – and others – alive for very much longer. So the earth has begun its own plan to set things right.
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To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.
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Reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has.
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Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It’s just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.
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Enjoy the simple, the natural and the plain. Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work.
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When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.
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Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time.
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But isn’t the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn’t? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around – walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.
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Those who think that the rewarding things in life are somewhere over the rainbow ‘burn their toast a lot,’ said Pooh
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Lots of people talk to animals… Not very many listen, though… That’s the problem.
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Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. That is the message of The Vinegar Tasters.
BENJAMIN HOFF