Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

Because you are alive, everything is possible.

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

Silence is essential. We need silence just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.

Around us, life bursts with miracles, a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

The quality of our life depends on the quality of the seeds that lie deep in our consciousness.

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.

God created people free, but in order to receive true freedom we have to obey God’s rules

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.- (1772-1834)

For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity.

Principle is ever my motto, no expediency.

I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.

In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold in the cities as a luxury food.

The power that holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man can do.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

No one is an inventor in the fashion business. Designers recreate fashion.

We make trifles of terrors, Ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, When we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.