“Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.”

The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.

Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.

Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart.

When we have for so long been judged by everyone we meet, just to look into the eyes of another who does not judge us can be extraordinarily healing.

If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean.

Meet this transient world with neither grasping nor fear, trust the unfolding of life, and you will attain true serenity.

Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness and resentment to the heart. Then choose.

Nobody knows why they were born or where they come from.

Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched.

Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.

What is truly a part of our spiritual path is that which brings us alive. If gardening brings us alive, that is part of our path, if it is music, if it is conversation we must follow what brings us alive.

It is true that the heart has its seasons, just as a flower opens to the sunlight and closes to the night. We need to be respectful of those rhythms. But we can’t close down for long. It is our true nature to have an open heart.

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion. Imagine asking for that.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish. Vision is when you see it in your mind and begin to imagine it

In dreams begins responsibility.

To those who have as yet not learned the secret of true happiness, which is the joy of coming into the closest relationship with the Maker and Preserver of all things: begin now to study the little things in your own door yard.

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.