“Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived.”

We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown – and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.

Don’t ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission.

There’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.

It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them.

It is far better to render beings in your car competent than to protect them.

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal, or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations – in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick.

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.

You’re not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!

Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.

You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.

Who cares if you are the prime minister of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?

Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.

Seek your happiness in the happiness of all.

Happiness comes to them who bring happiness to others.

Happiness comes to them who bring happiness to others.

Happiness comes to them who bring happiness to others.

Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf of bread, and a little idleness. If with such store I might sit by thy dear side in some lonely place, I should deem myself happier than a king in his kingdom.

I’m gladly doing my own thing for the time being.

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.