“If we fall, we don’t need self-recrimination or blame or anger – we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again.”

Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. We do not need to fear anything. We are whole: our deepest happiness is intrinsic to the nature of our minds, and it is not damaged through uncertainty and change.

Forgiveness that is insincere, forced or premature can be more psychologically damaging than authentic bitterness & rage.

We find greater lightness & ease in our lives as we increasingly care for ourselves & other beings.

If we have nothing material to give, we can offer our attention, our energy, our appreciation. The world needs us. It doesn’t deplete us to give.

With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire.

The combination of realizing our distinctiveness along with our unity is seeing interdependence.

With a clear intention and a willing spirit, sooner or later we experience the joy and freedom that arises when we recognize our common humanity with others and see that real love excludes no one.

Abiding faith does not depend on borrowed concepts. Rather, it is the magnetic force of a bone-deep, lived understanding, one that draws us to realize our ideals, walk our talk,and act in accord with what we know to be true.

To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through loving kindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within.

The mind thinks thoughts that we don’t plan. It’s not as if we say, ‘At 9:10 I’m going to be filled with self-hatred.

When we don’t tell those we love about what’s really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories.

We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.

Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.

Compassion grows in us when we know how the energy of love is available all around us.

You are a person worthy of love. You don’t have to do anything to prove that.

To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.

The man who becomes angry never does a great amount of work, and the man whom nothing can make angry accomplishes so much.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him–he has known a fear beyond every other.

The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had. Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore, fights begun by flare-ups of their tempers.

The man who gives way to anger, or hatred, or any other passion, cannot work; he only breaks himself to pieces, and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.

The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1795 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged.

As soon as we react, we become slaves. A man blames me, and I immediately react in the form of anger. A little vibration which he created made me a slave.