Quotes

Humourous

[After being told “You’d like him” about someone] Why do people always say that? I hate everyone, why would I like him?
— Jerry Seinfeld

If I wanted a lecture about money, I could’ve waited till Sunday and stolen from the collection plate again.
— Duckman

Serious

Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is little.
— Epicurus, Vatican Saying 68

The eyes are never satisfied, the stomach knows when it is full.
— Li Yueh

I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensees 139

Vanity.–How wonderful it is that a thing so evident as the vanity of the world is so little known, that it is a strange and surprising thing to say that it is foolish to seek greatness?
— Blaise Pascal, Pensees 161

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.
— Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

The mountain forests, the great open plains! Shall they make me joyful, shall they fill me with happiness? But even before the joy is done, sorrow has come to take its place. When joy and sorrow come I cannot stop them from coming, and when they go I cannot keep them from going. How sad it is!
— Chuang Tzu, chapter 22

This submarine has come up from the bottom of the ocean to kill us all, she thought, but there’s nothing strange about that, it could happen anytime. It has nothing to do with the war; it could happen to anyone anywhere. Everybody thinks it’s happening because of the war. But that’s not true. The war is just one of the things that could happen. — Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Never trust the man who tells you all his troubles but keeps from you all his joys.
— Jewish proverb

People may not be shameless. The shame of being shameless is shameless indeed!
— Mencius 6.1.

Who is able to leave a room without going out through the door? How is it, then, that no one follows this Way?
— Confucius, Analects 6.17

While there are many different things as to which it is not easy to make a right judgement, this is especially the case with one about which everybody thinks that it is very easy to judge and that anybody can decide.
— Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

If we were to uproot only one vice each year, we should soon become perfect. The contrary, however, is often the case–we feel that we were better and purer in the first fervor of our conversion than we are after many years in the practice of our faith. Our fervor and progress ought to increase day by day; yet it is now considered noteworthy if a man can retain even a part of his first fervor.
— Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

The same fire that melts the butter hardens the egg.
— Unknown origin

The other morning I heard a four-year-old girl ask her mother, “Why was I born into this world? To go to nursery school?” Naturally her mother could not honestly say, “Yes, that’s right, so off you go.” And yet, you could say that people these days are born to go to nursery school.
— Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

Insincere Speech, truly, is the prime material of insincere Action.
— Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present

A man can no more know his own heart than he can know his own face any other way than by reflection.
— Jonathan Swift, Sermon on the Difficulty of Knowing One’s-Self

When you are angry, does it feel good or bad? If it feels bad, why don’t you throw it away? How can you say that you are wise and intelligent when you hold on to such things?
— Ajahn Chah

Defilements are like a stray cat. If you give it as much food as it wants it will always be coming around looking for more food, but if you stop feeding it, after a couple of days it’ll stop coming around. It’s the same with the defilements, they won’t come to disturb you, they’ll leave your mind in peace. So rather than being afraid of defilement, make the defilements afraid of you.
— Ajahn Chah

In truth, you must be pretty foolish if you find living on your own causes you suffering. If you find living in a community with lots of people is a lot of suffering, you are equally foolish. It’s like chicken shit. If you are walking on your own somewhere carrying chicken shit, it stinks. If there is a whole group of people walking around carrying chicken shit, it stinks just the same.
— Ajahn Chah

To search for what is beyond the actual is to be caught in illusion.
— J. Krishnamurti

Do you know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way—like the hand of a child. Your hand does not burst open like the skin of a ripe fruit.
— Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel)

Do not fear the arising of thoughts, just fear being slow to notice them.
— Zen saying

“Whatever has to happen, let it happen!”
“Whatever the situation is, it’s fine!”
“I really don’t need anything!”
— The Three Fierce Mantras of Tsangpa Gyare