“Our values are influenced by whatever absorbs our minds.”

Monks understand that routine frees your mind, but the biggest threat to that freedom is monotony. People complain about their poor memories, but I’ve heard it said that we don’t have a retention problem, we have an attention problem.

Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance.

Actually, the greatest detachment is being close to everything and not letting it consume and own you. That’s real strength.

Sometimes we can trace our fears through the actions we take, and sometimes it’s the actions we’re reluctant to take

Cancers of the Mind: Comparing, Complaining, Criticizing.

We can’t stop our parents from dying, but we use the fear to remind us to spend more time with them.

Tracking my fear of exam results and the other branch fears that appeared led me to the root: fearing I couldn’t make my parents happy

Your dharma has to fill a need in the world

You don’t get to be a jerk just because you’re skilled.

I am happy about who I am becoming. I am open to all opportunities and possibilities. I am worthy of real love. I am ready to serve with all I have.

Our search is never for a thing, but for the feeling we think the thing will give us.

Life’s too short to live without purpose, to lose our chance to serve, to let our dreams and aspirations die with us.

Everything you do is your spiritual life.

Yesterday is but a dream. Tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

When we accept the temporary nature of everything in our lives, we can feel gratitude for the good fortune of getting to borrow them for a time.

We don’t have to do everything, that we can’t do everything, that what I can’t do is someone else’s gift and responsibility. My limitations make space for the gifts of other people

That the state of knowledge in any country will exert a directive influence on the general system of instruction adopted in it, is a principle too obvious to require investigation.

You stars that reigned at my nativity, whose influence hath allotted death and hell.

Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by passion, generated by vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose.

Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.

None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.

When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.

Affluence means influence.