“Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness, only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 106)
Lonely stillness—
a single cicada’s cry
sinking into stone
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 155)
“The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 26)
“I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.”
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
“People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, when you can, at any moment, find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy retreat than in your own soul—especially if on close inspection it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well-ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat and be renewed.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 91)
“[René] Descartes believed that idleness was essential to good mental work, and he made sure not to overexert himself.
Mason Currey, Daily Rituals (Page 151)
“We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things going from one quick base to another, often with a frenzy that wears us out. We collect data, things, people, ideas, ‘profound experiences,’ never penetrating any of them… But there are other times. There are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. Then we begin our ‘going down.'”
James Carroll, Sunbeams (Page 22)
Thich Nhat Hanh Quote on Inner Peace and Understanding The Nature Of Our Inner World
“We must look deeply into the nature of our volition to see whether it is pushing us in the direction of liberation from suffering and toward peace and compassion, or in the direction of affliction and misery. What is it that we really want deep in our heart? Is it money, fame, power? Or is it finding inner peace, being able to live life fully and enjoy the present moment?”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Savor
Beyond the Quote (244/365)
How to achieve inner peace? Eliminate all inner conflict. For what is peace but the absence of war? And who is less at peace than the person who is constantly at war within themselves? As is evidenced from throughout human history and in modern times, eliminating war is no easy feat. There are very real threats that, time and time again, have called for war under the context that the fight was (and is) for the greater good. And while the means for achieving peace in the external world are (and will forever be) up for debate because we all share this world together—achieving inner peace is something that is (and will forever be) up to only you.
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