Zen Quotes

On this page you'll find some of my favorite inspirational quotes. They're in no particular order. They are just here for everyone to live and learn from. I still am. If you know of a good one you can offer, please email me and I will post it...

Sincerely,
Paul Robert Herman

---

• "What we think, we become." - Buddha
• "You can cheat an honest man but you can not make a fool out of him." - Confucius
• "Anyone willing to give up liberty in exchange for security deserves neither." - Benjamin Franklin
• "It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end." - Ursula LeGuin
• "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul." - W. E. Henley (Invictus)
• "Dream is the spark of passion; talent is the firework of its expression; perseverance, the sacred fire of its accomplishment." - Daniel Chabot
• "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson
• "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." - Thomas Edison
• "Time isn't a commodity, something you pass around like cake. Time is the substance of life. When anyone asks you to give your time, they're really asking for a chunk of your life." - Antoinette Bosco
• "Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." - Eleanor Roosevelt
• "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain
• "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." - Helen Keller
• "Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Buddha
• "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." - Robert F. Kennedy
• "The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher." - Chinese Proverb
• "Be like a duck, calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath." - Michael Caine
• "Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in while, or the light won't come in." - Alan Alda
• "To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities." - Goethe
• "Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." - Chinese Proverb
• "No man is free who is not master of himself." - Epictetus
• "To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish." - Ancient Chinese Proverb
• "One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests." - John Stuart Mill
• "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
• "The simple function of man is to live, not just exist." - Jack London
• "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl Sagan
• "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant." - Robert Louis Stevenson
• "The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively." - Bob Marley
• "Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Believe you can and you're halfway there." - Theodore Roosevelt
• "Magic is believing in yourself; if you can do that, you can make anything happen." - Goethe
• "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." - John D. Rockefeller
• "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens." - J.R.R. Tolkien
• "Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them." - Orison Swett Marden
• "Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results." - Dennis Wholey
• "Only those who dare, truly live." - Ruth Freedman
• "Obstacles are necessary for success... victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your ability and your confidence and thus each obstacle is a comrade-in-arms forcing you to become better... or quit. Each rebuff is an opportunity to move forward; turn away from them, avoid them, and you throw away your future." - Og Mandino
• "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." - Lord Chesterfield
• "Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." - Robert Louis Stevenson
• "When you have no choice, mobilize the spirit of courage." - Jewish proverb
• "All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them, but confront them." - William F. Halsey
• "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." - John Morley
• "Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth it's spark." - Henri-Frederic Amiel
• "Nurture your mind with great thoughts." - Benjamin Disraeli
• "Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still." - Chinese proverb
• "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "...Not all those who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien
• "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E. B. White
• "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich." - Tao Te Ching
• "Knowledge will give you power, but character respect." - Bruce Lee
• "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." - Harvey Fierstein
• "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - Rene Descartes
• "The mind is owned by the self and can make a hell of heaven or heaven of hell." - John Milton
• "Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin." - Hermann Hesse
• "The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it." - Colin Wilson
• "Allow yourself to be inspired. Allow yourself to succeed. Dare to excel." - Vince Dente
• "It ain't easy to get movers and shakers to believe in you until you have a track record. So go make your own track and build your own record." - Jack R. Stanley
• "To find yourself, think for yourself." - Socrates
• "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be." - Abraham Moslow
• "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy
• "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Sir Winston Churchill
• "We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." - Abraham Lincoln
• "Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement, let me go upstairs and check." - M.C. Escher
• "Action is the fundamental key to all success." - Pablo Picasso
• "The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." - Confucius
• "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." - Vincent Van Gogh
• "If you stop searching, you stop living, because then you're dwelling in the past. If you're not reaching forward to any growth or future, you might as well be dead." - Wynn Bullock
• "Motivation will almost always beat mere talent." - Norman R. Augustine
• "Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street." - Zig Ziglar
• "Give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you." - Madeline S. Bridges
• "It takes a certain level of aspiration before one can take advantage of opportunities that are clearly offered." - Michael Harrington
• "Ambition is a commendable attribute, without which no man succeeds. Only inconsiderate ambition imperils." - Warren G. Harding
• "Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads." - Erica Jong
• "The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other." - Orison Swett Marden
• "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." - Leonardo da Vinci
• "Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind." - Seneca
• "When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity." - John F. Kennedy
• "Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength." - Arnold Schwarzenegger
• "If you neglect your art for one day it will neglect you for two." - Chinese Proverb
• "On the human chessboard, all moves are possible." - Miriam Schiff
• "Patience and fortitude conquer all things." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm." - Charles M. Schwab
• "You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try – you don't take the risk." - Rosalynn Carter
• "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Eliot
• "If you have a 'why' to live by, you can live with any 'how'." - Nietzsche
• "It doesn't matter how much you want. What really matters is how much you want it. The extent and complexity of the problem does not matter was much as does the willingness to solve it." - Ralph Marston
• "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi
• "You must be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
• "For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is." - Goethe
• "The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests." - Gail Sheehy
• "Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations." - George Bernard Shaw
• "Following the Noble Path is like entering a dark room with a light in the hand; the darkness will all be cleared away, and the room will be filled with light." - Buddha
• "The truth is more important than the facts." - Frank Lloyd Wright
• "Veritas Lux Mea" - Latin Proverb, means "The truth is my light."
• "One never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it." - Henry Moore
• "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
• "Dreams do not vanish, so long as people do not abandon them." - Phantom F. Harlock
• "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney
• "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." - Edgar Allen Poe
• "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll
• "Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal." - Ralph Vaull Starr
• "I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires." - Khalil Gibran
• "All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes, and make them come true." - T.E. Lawrence
• "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." - Henry David Thoreau
• "Imagination rules the world." - Napoleon Bonaparte
• "The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." - Charles du Bois
• "Reach high, for the stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal." - Pamela Vaull Starr
• "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
• "Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is but today's dream." - Kahlil Gibran
• "All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." - Edgar Allen Poe
• "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
• "Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed." - Kahlil Gibran
• "If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that ... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it." - John Lennon
• "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." - Henry David Thoreau
• "I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong." - Leo Rosten
• "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." - Sir Winston Churchill
• "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." - Buddha
• "Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads." - Erica Jong
• "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
• "Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these." - Susan B. Anthony
• "This above all; to thine own self be true." - William Shakespeare
• "The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." - John Ruskin
• "The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." - Robert M. Pirsig
• "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite." - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• "Temet Nosce" - Latin Proverb, means "Know Thyself."