“Negative emotions are like unwelcome guests. Just because they show up on our doorstep doesn’t mean they have a right to stay.”

Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death. All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other.

If you have your full attention in the moment, you will see only love.

No matter what the situation, remind yourself “I have a choice.”

Now is the moment that never ends.

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.

There is a light within each of us that can never be diminished or extinguished. It can only be obscured by forgetting who we are

The Universe contains three things that cannot be destroyed; Being, Awareness and LOVE.

What you pay attention to grows. If your attention is attracted to negative situations and emotions, then they will grow in your awareness.

The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.

The next thing you think, the next action you take, will either create a new possibility for you, or it will repeat the past.

Change your story, change your life. Basically, that’s what it is.

You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.

It’s hard enough to change ourselves. We can’t expect other people to change so that we feel better. We have to take the journey ourselves.

The person you call an enemy is an exaggerated aspect of your own shadow self.

I teach people that no matter what the situation is, no matter how chaotic, no matter how much drama is around you, you can heal by your presence if you just stay within your center.

The key to lasting happiness is to stop looking for it, and to know that you already have it.

Whether we like it or not, we are all on a journey, a Quest if you will, every day of our lives, and the path we must take is full of perils, and our destiny can never be predicted in advance.

Tasting a dish should be memorable If nothing remains in the memory of a single guest, then I have made a mistake.

About four or five months ago, at a dinner in New York, John made the very nice offer of my being guest editor for an issue of MAD and I thought about it for about half a nanosecond and decided that was a pretty good idea.

I always tell people that if you really want to know somebody, they should listen to that person’s interview with me. I spend a lot of time with my guests.

Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.

No guest is so welcome in a friend’s house that he will not become a nuisance after three days.

No one can be so welcome a guest that he will not become an annoyance when he has stayed three continuous days in a friend’s house.

The number of guests at dinner should not be less than the number of the Graces nor exceed that of the Muses, i.e., it should begin with three and stop at nine.