Alan Watts:

“As you get older and wiser, it is not just flagging energy but wisdom that teaches you to look at mountains from below, or perhaps just climb them a little way. For at the top you can no longer see the mountain.”

An old aphorism from India says: “What is beyond, is that which is also hear. And yet, you must not take this for a kind of blasé boredom or a tiring of adventure. It is instead the startling recognition that in the place where we are now, we have already arrived. This is it. What we are seeking is, if we are not totally blind, already here.”

On the Tao: “When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself, becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. If the cat made up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid and would just be a bag of broken bones upon landing.

In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling out of a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling─and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

So, instead of living in a state of constant tension and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat. Don’t resist it.”

“Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.”

“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

William Blake:

“Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”

“The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom . . . for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.”

“Mere enthusiasm is the all in all . . .Passion and expression are beauty itself.”

“Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction.”

Albert Einstein:

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

“If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. . . . The world will be yours and everything in it, what’s more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
Rudyard Kipling

“Atman has gradations of manifestation in relative reality”
Shankara

“But ’tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors, try to be better than yourself.”
William Faulkner

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just the first step.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.”
Abraham Maslow

On Beauty

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
Kahlil Gibran

“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”
Sophia Loren

“Pull you from your tower, take away your pain. Show you all the beauty you possess, if you only let yourself believe.”
Sarah McLachlan

“The difference between pretty and beautiful is: Pretty is temporal-whereas beautiful is eternal.”
Unknown

On Strength

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
Anais Nin

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
Mahatma Gandhi

“Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”
Unknown

On Fortitude

“People need trouble ─ a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.”
William Faulkner

“Agriculture is for living; mind culture is for life. Skills are for shaping material things so that they cater more for the comfort of man; studies are for shaping attitudes, feelings, desires, emotions and impulses of man, so that they may confer more peace, more joy and more fortitude on man.”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Splendor, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, absence of malice, and absence of pride; these are the qualities of those endowed with divine virtues, O Arjuna.”
Bhagavad Gita

On Imagination

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?'”
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert Einstein

On Wisdom

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.”
Confucius

“Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.”
Swami Sivananda

“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”
Kahlil Gibran

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
Confucius

Serenity Prayer:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr

Serenity Prayer (short version):

“F**k em!”
Anonymous

Arthur Schopenhauer:

“If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.”

“It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.”

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”