I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)
Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.
As soon as I wake up I pay homage to the Buddha, and I try to prepare my mind to be more altruistic, more compassionate, during the day to come so I can be of benefit to beings. Then I do physical exersice - I walk on a treadmill.
I will try one hundred times to get up, and if I fail one hundred times. If I fail and I give up, will I ever get up? No! If I fail I’ll try again, and again and again. But I want to tell you it’s not the end.
Once I was on a plane and a woman said to me, 'Now, what's the matter with my tomatoes?' And I said, 'Well, it's a bit difficult to see from here.' She took offence and said, 'I was only trying to be friendly.'
Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals.
Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.
Every second of the search is an encounter with God. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous...I've discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.
The truth is that you cannot attain God if you have even a trace of desire. Subtle is the way of dharma. If you are trying to thread a needle, you will not succeed if the thread has even a slight fiber sticking out.
I'm about to embark on what may be as important as an initiative as anything I do as President, trying to nudge the world in the direction of doing something serious about climate change.
You can't lose what you serve. That's the secret. What you serve, you can't lose. What you don't serve and what you try to hold onto, you can't hold onto. It's always slipping out of your fingers.
Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.