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 HOFFIn the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between superior and inferior to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity.
More Benjamin Hoff Quotes
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A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care, wisdom does.
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It means that Tao doesn’t force or interfere with things, but lets them work in their own way, to produce results naturally. Then whatever needs to be done is done.
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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.
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The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can’t save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.
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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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The Infinite Universal Power is more than just a narrow-minded gatekeeper to a spiritual County Club.
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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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The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard – one that thinks too much.
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The Universe knows what it’s doing. So don’t develop a big ego, and don’t be afraid.
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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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Knowledge and Experience do not necessarily speak the same language.
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The 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.
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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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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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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.
BENJAMIN HOFF