What I detest most are dishonest people who talk more than they are capable of doing.

Joy and suffering are the fruit of right and wrong thinking. Suffering, especially, is mostly self-manufactured; we are never so happy or so unhappy as we suppose.

The Dominicans have the simplicity of a real human being; there is not so hypocrisy like in the big cities.

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

Negativeness very often unknowingly creeps up upon us. It helps occasionally to stop all thoughts (the chattering of worries, anticipations, and so forth, in your head) and then once more refreshingly march bravely on.

Most people can talk without listening. Very few can listen without talking. It is very rare that people can talk and listen.

Realizing that my emotions are both positive and negative, I will form daily habits which will encourage the development of the positive emotions and aid me in converting the negative emotions into some form of useful action.

The important thing is that I am personally satisfied with my work. If it is a piece of junk, I will only regret it.

There is fear and insecurity in pride, for when one aims at being highly esteemed, and having achieved such status, he is automatically involved in the fear of losing one’s status.

Then protection of his status appears to be his most important need, and this creates anxiety.

If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.

The more and more you are aware, the more and more you shed from day to day what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh, uncontaminated by previous conditioning.

There is nothing that will enable you to pursue your course in greater peace than the patient bearing of insult. Patience is not passive, on the contrary it is concentrated strength.

“A man is literally what he thinks”. This might be a shocking statement, but everything is a state of mind.

The subconscious mind favors thoughts inspired by emotional feelings. It also gives preference to dominating thoughts.

The past is no more, the future is not yet. “Now” includes the balance of being here, experiencing, involvement, phenomenon, awareness.

To understand and live now, there must be dying to everything of yesterday. Die continually to every gained experience – be in a state of choiceless awareness of what is.

When you are awake, you must be fully awake and conscious about everything. This is a wonderful exercise.

Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the anticipation of suffering.

A concentrated mind is not an attentive mind, but a mind that is in a state of awareness can concentrate. Awareness is never exclusive, it includes everything.

Concentration is a narrowing down of the mind – but we are concerned with the total process of living, and to concentrate exclusively on any particular aspect of life, belittles life.

All thought is partial, is can never be total. Thought is the response of memory, and memory is always partial, because memory is the result of experience; so thought is the reaction of a mind which is conditioned by experience.

The mind must be wide open in order to function freely in thought. For a limited mind cannot think freely.

To bring the mind into sharp focus and to make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere, the mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought process, and even ordinary thought itself.

To be on the alert means to be deadly serious; to be deadly serious means to be sincere to oneself, and it is sincerity that finally leads to the Way.

Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind.

Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere.

Mans’s mind and his behavior are one, his inner thought and outer expression cannot contradict each other. Therefore a man should set up his right principle, and this right mind (principle) will influence his action.

Don’t think – feel. Feeling exists here and now when not interrupted and dissected by ideas or concepts.

Just watch choicelessly and in the watching lies the wonder. It is not an ideal, an end to be desired. The watching is a state of “being” already, not a state of “becoming”.

Anxiety is the gap between the “now” and the “then”. SO if you are in the “now”, you can’t be anxious, because your excitement flows immediately into ongoing spontaneous activity.

One great cause of failure is lack on concentration.

The moment we stop analyzing and let go, we can start really seeing, feeling – as one whole.

There is no need to exert oneself in special cultivation outside the daily round of living.

To understand your fear is the beginning of really seeing.

The present? Well, think of it in terms of challenges and opportunities, and the rewards available for the application of your talents and energies.

As for the future, that is a time and a place where every worthy ambition you posses is within your grasp.

In a time when everything goes well, my mind is pampered with enjoyment, possessiveness, etc. Only in times of adversity, privation, or mishap, does my mind function and think properly of my state. This close examination of self strengthens my mind and leads me to understand and be understood.

Here is natural instinct, and there is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme you will be very unscientific; if you have another to the extreme, you become a mechanical man, no longer human being.

So it is a successful combination of both. It is not pure naturalness, or pure unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness.

When my tutor assisted me in choosing my courses, he advised me to take up philosophy because of my inquisitiveness. He said, “philosophy will tell you what man lives for”.

Philosophy is itself the disease for which it pretends to be the cure: the wise man does not pursue wisdom but lives his life, and therein precisely does his wisdom lie.

Just as the maintaining of good health may require the taking of unpleasant medicine, so the condition of being able to do the things we enjoy often requires the performance of a few we don’t.

It is the ego that stands rigidly against things coming from the outside, and it is this “ego rigidity” that makes it impossible for us to accept everything that confronts us.

One should get rid of this obtruding self – or ego-consciousness – and apply himself to the work to be done as if nothing particular were taking place at the moment.

Logic’s central problem is the distinction between correct and incorrect argument.

Emotions – the most important motors of our behavior.

Art is communication of feelings.

Art must originate with an experience or feeling of the artist.

The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world without.