Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.
One must know oneself before knowing anything else. It is only after a man has thus understood himself inwardly and has thus seen his way, that life acquires peace and significance.
I've not yet succeeded in obeying the Delphic injunction to know myself, and it seems to me absurd to consider problems about other beings while I am still in ignorance about my own nature.
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
In this moment there is nothing which comes to be. In this moment there is nothing which ceases to be. Thus there is no birth-and-death to be brought to an end. Wherefore the absolute tranquillity (of nirvana) is this present moment. Though it is at this moment, there is no limit to this moment, and herein is eternal delight.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
I never was lost in the woods in my whole life, though once I was confused for three days.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water falling on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear.
What is to give light must endure burning.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.
I don't like work but I like what is in the work — the chance to find yourself.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.
If you believe you can, or if you believe you can't, you're right
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Speak less. No one ever put their foot in their mouth when they were not speaking. Worse, if you are speaking, you can't be listening, and we always learn much more from listening.
Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.
Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Such is life - Seven times down, Eight times up