Some of My Favorite Quotes

I often have people ask me after my yoga classes, what was that quote that you read during relaxation? So I thought I'd compile a list of some favorite quotes and post it. So here it is. I hope you enjoy them and are as inspired as am when I read them.

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world… as in being able to remake ourselves." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"This is universal. You sit and observe your breath. You can’t say this is Hindu breath or Christian breath or Muslim breath."  ~ Charles Johnson

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."~ Carlos Castanenda

“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” ~ Gandhi

"Each one of us is merely a small instrument. When you look at the inner
workings of electrical things, often you see small and big wires, new and old,
cheap and expensive, lined up. Until the current passes through them, there will
be no light. That wire is you and me. The current is God. We have the power to
let the current pass through us, use us, to produce the light of the world. Or we
can refuse, and allow darkness to spread."  ~ Mother Teresa

"Experience is not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to
you."  ~ Aldous Huxley

"If we know anything about a path at all, it's only because of the Great ones that
have gone before us. Out of their love and kindness, they have left some
footprints for us to follow. So, in the same way that they wish for us, we wish
that all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be safe, be happy, have good
health, and enough to eat. And may we all live at ease of heart with whatever
comes to us in life."  ~ Kirtan closing words by Krishna Das

"Life is like a stroll on the beach, as near to the edge as you care to go."
~ Thoreau

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at
the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." 
~ Helen Keller

"What lies before us and what lies behind us is nothing compared to what lies
within us." ~ Emerson

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy,
practice compassion."  ~ The Dalai Lama

"Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind.  
To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all." ~ Buddha

"Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your
deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as
beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings."  ~ Rumi

"First of all the twinkling stars vibrated,
but remained motionless in space,
then all the celestial globes were united into one series of movements.
… Firmament and planets both disappeared,
but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up
remained."
~ Vincent Van Gogh

"In the sea of love, I melt like salt - faith, doubt - they both dissolve. A star is
opening in my heart. The worlds turn in it."   ~ Rumi

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time
and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separated from the rest...a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This
delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
~ Albert Einstein

"I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when
you are at that center within you, and I am at that place within me, we shall be
one."
~ Chief Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux, 1877

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
~ Jack Kornfield

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.”
~ James Thurber

"“The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love.
What seeds will you plant there?”   
~ Jack Kornfield

"No mirror ever became iron again,
No bread ever became wheat;
No ripened grape ever became sour fruit.
Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse.
Become the light.”
~ Mevlana Rumi, 13th century sufi poet and mystic

"The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart."
~ Rumi