Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Mark Twain

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Anton Chekhov

He who doesn't fear death dies only once.

Giovanni Falcone

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Leonardo da Vinci

A person hears only what they understand.

Goethe

Psychological Evolution

After a million years, of fifty thousand years, have we changed deeply? Aren't we very primitive, barbarous? So I am asking if you will consider whether there is psychological evolution at all? I question it. Personally, to the speaker, there is no psychological evolution: there is only the ending of sorrow, of pain, anxiety, loneliness, despair and all that. Man has lived with it for a million years. And if we rely on time, which is thought - time and thought go together - if we rely on evolution then another thousand years or more, and we will still be barbarous.

J. Krishnamurti New York United Nations 11th April 1985

True meditation

True meditation is making everything - coughing, swallowing, waving, movement and stillness, speaking and acting, good and evil, fame and shame, loss and gain, right and wrong - into one single koan.

Hakuin