"Even when walking in a party of no more than three I can always be certain of learning from those I am with. There will be good qualities that I can select for imitation and bad ones that will teach me what requires correction in myself." -- Confucius

"In terms of a learning process, unless a mistake is fatal, it isn’t fatal." -- Adam Smith

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed." -- C. G. Jung

They came to a stream. There stood a girl unable to cross for fear of ruining her dress. The first monk picked her up and carried her across. The monks continued their journey in silence. After a few hours the second monk turned and asked, "How could you pick her up when we have made vows not to even look at a woman?" The first monk replied, "I left her back at the stream but you seem to be still carrying her." -- Zen story

"I no longer try to change outer things. They are simply a reflection. I change my inner perception and the outer reveals the beauty so long obscured by my own attitude. I concentrate on my inner vision and find my outer view transformed. I find myself attuned to the grandeur of life and in unison with the perfect order of the universe." ---Daily Word

"Only the supremely wise and the ignorant do not alter." -- Confucius

"Intimacy is not given- it’s a way of being alive. At every moment, we are choosing either to reveal ourselves or to protect ourselves, to value or diminish ourselves, to tell the truth or to hide, to dive into life or to avoid it. Intimacy is making a choice to be connected to, rather than isolated from, our deepest truths at that moment." -- Unknown

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." --Aristotle

"What is to give light must endure burning.." -- Viktor Frankl

"If you have made mistakes... there is always another chance for you... you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down." --- Mary Pickford

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." --- Marcel Proust

"The important thing is this: To be ready at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." --Charles DuBois

"A ship is safe in harbor- but that’s not what ships are for." --John A. Shedd

"Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity."-- Hippocrates

"When people have integrated most of their Shadows, they spend less energy repressing and denying their internal reality..... They spend less time fighting external battles because they don't so often project their Shadows onto others." --Carol Pearson, Ph.D.

"The only way out is in......." -- Unknown

"It does not take sharp eyes to see the sun and the moon, nor does it take sharp ears to hear the thunderclap. Wisdom is not obvious. You must see the subtle and notice the hidden to be victorious." -- Sun Tzu

"Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had though to be alone, we shall be with all the world." --Joseph Campbell

"You never fail until you stop trying." -- Florence Griffith Joyner

"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing." -- Anaïs Nin

"We can do no great things- only small things with great love." ---Mother Teresa

"With stammering lips and insufficient sounds, I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature...." --Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves." -- Anonymous

"When all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal." --Katha Upanishad

"Alas! The world is full of enormous lights and mysteries, and man shuts them from himself with one small hand!" -- Baal Shem Tov

"He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have beautiful roses in his heart." -- Samuel Reynolds Hole

"The possibility for evil requires no more than ignorance of another's pain." --Richard Wolkomir

"Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you." --Matthew 7:7-9

"Wisdom (is) knowing what is true for oneself and the world and operating so as to give everything its due and no more. The wise are not constantly overwhelmed by inner signals urging them to actions that are inappropriate as judged by the results. -- Robert Hand

"Uncertainty is the necessary companion of all explorers." --Marilyn Ferguson

"The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.  I am not alone and unacknowledged.  They nod to me and I to them."  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"[Breadbaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony.  It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread."  --M.F.K. Fisher

"It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner & thinner till there is none at all…. We are not the less to aim at the summits, though the multitude does not ascend them." --Henry David Thoreau

"... we can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.... This, then is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy." -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

... and what might be referred to as my Zen kōan:

"The more I learn the less I know." -- Magi Helena