Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another.

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.

Do not doubt your own basic goodness. In spite of all confusion and fear, you are born with a heart that knows what is just, loving, and beautiful.

In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived How well we have loved How well we have learned to let go

Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.

Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.

The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love.

God in his infinite wisdom has deposited in everything the potential for growth and multiplication.

It is not enough to recognize what is right and true. One must control the impulse to do what is wrong and easy.

It's just hard to travel in the shadow of regret. In fact, it's so hard that I actually haven't left yet.

The rifle and handgun are 'equalizers' -- the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.

Awareness, not deprivation, informs what you eat. Presence, not shame, changes how you see yourself and what you rely on.

The past is gone. I know it sounds cliché, but you're here. Like be in it. And boxing was a really good analogy for me to try and carry that in my everyday life all the time.

A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.

The purest white seems stained.

The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect.