Zen Quotes

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

"Peace begins with a smile."

"Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means."

"If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts."

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."

"Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be."

"Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace."

"Nobody can bring you peace but yourself."

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

"Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without."

"You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level."

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

"The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence."

"Peace is always beautiful."

"Set peace of mind as your highest goal, and organize your life around it."

"Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions."

"Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace."

"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

"Peace is not something you wish for. It is something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away."

"What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family."

"Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind."

"The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness."

"Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience."

"Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance."

"Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different."

"Today I choose joy. Today I choose peace. Today I choose me."

"The morning shines forever. Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind."

"After a storm comes a calm."

"I've had to calm down, I have a kid! It is amazing. It's the best thing ever. Nothing better than it."

"Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens."

"The seated lotus postures are an amazing way to go into meditation, or simply just to take a moment to ground oneself."

"I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza."

"Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us."

"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another."

"There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance."

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

"I think it's naive to pray for world peace if we're not going to change the form in which we live."

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace."

"He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly."

"Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let's drink to the hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness and peace again."

"Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency."

"Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth let a people loving freedom come to growth."

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace."

"I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do."

"Now I meditate twice a day for half an hour. In meditation, I can let go of everything. I'm not Hugh Jackman. I'm not a dad. I'm not a husband. I'm just dipping into that powerful source that creates everything. I take a little bath in it."

"My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s."

"Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance and when constitutional freedoms are preserved."

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education all politics can do is keep us out of war."

"Deep experience is never peaceful."