Some Favourite Quotations

'The greatest danger to our future is apathy'  -  Jane Goodall 

'We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating. Any of us might recall being misunderstood, overlooked, abandoned, treated unjustly. When we succumb to this we belong to others and are in exile from ourselves. To return to ourselves we have to be in touch with what we fundamentally care about, that which allows us to know who we are.'  -  Sharon Salzberg

'This is for the welfare of the many, for the happiness of the many, for the benefit and welfare and the happiness of beings. This is out of sympathy for the world.'  -  The Buddha

'According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say women are too judgemental, whereas, of course, men are just grateful.'  -  Robert De Niro

'The suffering itself is not so bad; it's the resentment against suffering that's the real pain.'  -  Allen Ginsberg

‘The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it.  Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.’  -  Alice Miller

'The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.'  -  Carl Rogers

The Rabbit looked up at her, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn’t think where. “I am the nursery magic Fairy,” she said. “I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out, and the children don’t need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real.”
“Wasn’t I Real before?” asked the little Rabbit. “You were Real to the Boy,” the Fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one.”  -  Margery Williams, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’, 1922

‘Haba na haba hujaza kibaba (Little by little fills the pot).’  -  Swahili saying

'Everyone wants to be happy. Nobody wants to suffer.'  -  Dalai Lama

'I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?"'  -  Eve Merriam

'There are real problems in this world, problems that will need enormous vision and ingenuity and generosity for their solution. The war in Iraq represents the lack of any of these, and the abject squandering of our potential as a civilisation. We should be ashamed: not only for what we've done in Iraq, but for everything else we've thus failed to do.'  -  Brian Eno

By teaching us that something is fundamentally wrong with us, our parents and culture carry forth the message of Eden. As we internalize this view of our nature, we become ensnared in the trance of unworthiness. We spend years and decades of our lives trying to be who they wanted us to be, trying to be good enough to reenter the garden'.  -  Tara Brach

'Be a light unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge.'  -  The Buddha

In that book which is my memory, On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, Appear the words, 'Here begins a new life'."  -  Dante Alighieri

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself up to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-  'Wild Geese', by Mary Oliver

'Michael. Take a look in the mirror. You are the very image of a liberal man.'  -  Tiffany Schneider