“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation…and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.”

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

The river is everywhere.

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.

And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.

Happiness is love, nothing else. A man who is capable of love is happy.

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.

You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.

His life oscillates, as everyone’s does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.

Gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.

Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.

All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!

The amazing thing about love and attention and encouragement and grace and success and joy is that these things are infinite. We get a new supply every single morning, and so we can give it away all day. We never, ever have to monitor the supply of others or grab or hoard.

We can’t encourage narrow mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought.

What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.

If wanting to win is a fault, as some of my critics seem to insist, then I plead guilty. I like to win. I know no other way. It’s in my blood.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.