“You can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best you are denying yourself the right to be you. That’s a seed that you should really nurture in your mind. You don’t need knowledge or great philosophical concepts. You don’t need the acceptance of others. You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.” ~ don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
“Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action.” ~ don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
“People underestimate the impact that bad health has on the rest of your life.” ~ Leo Babauta, Zen Habits
“Man creates what he is, man creates himself. The meaning has to be created. You have to sing your meaning, you have to dance your meaning, you have to paint your meaning, you have to live it. Through living, it will arise; through dancing, it will start penetrating your being. Through singing, it will come to you. It is not like a rock just lying there to be found, it has to bloom in your being.”
Osho, The Book of Understanding (page 227)
“People wonder why there seems to be no meaning in life. Meaning does not exist a priori. There is no meaning existing in life; one has to create it. Only if you create it will you discover it. It has to be invented first. It is not lying there like a rock, it has to be created like a song. It is not a thing, it is significance that you bring through your consciousness.”
Osho, The Book of Understanding (page 221)
“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
“Not giving a shit about what other people think will liberate you. I don’t see the point in impressing people we don’t like, with things we don’t need, and living a life we don’t want. People only do that because everyone else is doing it. And they think it’s the normal thing to do. Well, fuck normality. This is your life, do whatever the hell you want with it, do whatever the hell makes you happy and get rid of the excess baggage.” ~ Satori, infinitesatori.org
“The extent to which you learn more about the world increases the depth of your experience. To live smarter means to live fuller. It also means to be aware of how much you can never know. To understand the limits of your knowledge is a wonderful thing. It is our responsibility as human beings to deliberately take advantage of the fact that we are living at a time when valuable information is more accessible than ever before.” ~ Unknown, The Daily Zen