True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.
—Pema Chödrön
It’s as though we have two selves or two natures or two wills with two contrary viewpoints.… Your lower self sees you as the center of the universe—your higher self sees you as a cell in the body of humanity.
—Peace Pilgrim
What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.
—Henny Youngman
He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
—Samuel Butler
You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.
—Anne Lamott
There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor.
—Oscar Wilde
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
—Anaïs Nin
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.
—John Ciardi
If art can reveal the truth, art can also lie. An artist can be not only divinely inspired, but diabolically inspired.
—George Bernard Shaw
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
—James Baldwin
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.”
—Sharon Salzberg
Learn your theories well but put them aside when you confront the mystery of the living soul.
—Carl Jung
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
—E. B. White
The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.
—Flannery O'Connor
Because children see parents as authority figures and gods, they think that the way you treat them is the way they deserve to be treated: “What you say about me is what I am” is a literal truth to your child. Consequently, when children are treated with respect, they conclude that they deserve respect and hence develop self-respect.
—Stephanie Marston