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Interruption

There cannot be greater rudeness,
than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse;
for if there be not impertinent folly in answering a man
before we can know what he will say,
yet it is a plain declaration,
that we are weary to hear him talk any longer;
and have a disesteem for what he says;
which we, judging not fit to entertain the company,
desire them to give audience to us,
who have something to produce worthy of their attention.
This shows a great disrespect, and cannot but be offensive;
and yet, this is what almost all interruption constantly carries with it.
To which, if there be added, as is usual,
a correcting of any mistake, or a contradiction of what has been said,
it is a mark of yet greater pride and self-conceitedness,
when we thus intrude ourselves for teachers,
and take upon us, either to set another right in his story,
or shew the mistakes of his judgement.
-John Locke

Irritation

We often irritate others
when we think we could not possibly do so.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
 
A person who ponders often on inharmonious thoughts
is very easily offended,
it does not take long for him to get offended;
a little thing here and there make him feel irritated
because irritation is already there,
it wants just a little touch to make it a deeper irritation.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
Everything that irritates us about others
can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
-Carl Jung
 
How can something bother you
if you won't let it?
-Anonymous

Jealousy

Jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship
or a valued part of a relationship
that we already have.
-Brene Brown

Jealousy is the fear of comparison.
-Max Frisch

Jealousy is a terrible thing.
It resembles love, only it is precisely love's contrary.
Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved,
it desires the dependence of that object upon itself,
and its own triumph.
-Henri Frederic Amiel
 
The knives of jealousy are honed on details.
-Ruth Rendell

Judgement

With all judgement there is fear
-The Oculatum
 
When you judge others,
you do not define them,
you define yourself.
-Wayne Dyer

Each thing you judge (positively or negatively)
is you.
-Penney Peirce
 
Our judgements judge us;
and nothing reveals us
or exposes our weaknesses more ingeniously
than the attitude of pronouncing them upon our fellows.
-Paul Valery
 
We do not judge men
but what they are in themselves,
but by what they are relative to us.
-Anne Swetchine
 
All judgement is self-judgement.
-Paul Richard
 
To see a world that doesn't judge you,
you have to stop judging yourself.
-Tom Carpenter
 
It took me a long time
not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.
-Sally Field
 
Get rid of the tendency to judge yourself
above, below, or equal to others.
-Abhirupa-Nanda

We live by fragments of experience
and judge by our fragmentary values each thing and whole.
-Aurobindo Ghose
 
Judge not another by your own law.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
It is amazing from what a mere fraction of a fact concerning him
a man will dare judge the whole of another man.
-George MacDonald
 
In judging others we always judge them by our own ideals.
That is not as it should be.
Everyone must be judged according to his own ideal,
and not by that of anyone else.
-Vivekananda
 
We ought not to judge men
by their absolute excellence,
but by the distance they have traveled
from the point at which they started.
-Henry Ward Beecher
 
Once we judge someone or something
we tend to stop thinking about them or it.
Which means, along with other things,
that behave in response to our judgements
rather than to that which is being judged.
People and things are processes.
Judgements convert them into fixed states.
This is one reason that judgements are often self-fulfilling.
-Neil Postman
 
Never judge a man by his errors.
-Selvarajan Yesudian
 
Judge a tree from its fruit,
not from its leaves.
-Euripides
 
Beware as long as you live,
of judging people by appearance.
-Jean de La Fontaine
 
What we do not understand
we have no right to judge.
-Henry Frederic Amiel
 
When one understands, one no longer judges
and when one judges, it means that one doesn't know.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"
 
One who has the vision, the consciousness,
who is capable of seeing the truth in all things,
never feels the need to judge anything whatever.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"
 
Let yourself become that space
that welcomes any experience without judgement.
-Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Lack of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the result
of the relationship you have with yourself...
the thoughts and attitudes you have of yourself.
-Phil Laut
 
Every man stamps his own value on himself.
-Johann von Schiller

Self-esteem is your reputation with yourself.
-Nathaniel Branden

When we act in ways that conflict 
with our judgement of what is appropriate,
we lose face in our own eyes.
-Nathaniel Branden
 
The biggest obstacle to happiness
is lack of self-esteem.
People who lack an internal sense
of self-value, self-respect and self-worth,
become very egocentric.
-Robert Schuller

Your problem is 
you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.
-Richard Alpert, "Ram Dass"

Lack of self-worth is the fundamental source of all emotional pain.
-Gary Zukav
 
A man cannot be comfortable
without his own approval.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain"
 
He that respects himself is safe from others;
he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
No man who is occupied in doing a difficult thing,
and doing it very well,
ever loses his self-respect.
-George Bernard Shaw

Loneliness

There is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.
-Charles Bukowski
 
At the innermost core of all loneliness
is a deep and powerful yearning
for union with one's lost self.
-Brendan Francis

He never is alone
that is accompanied with noble thoughts.
-John Fletcher
 
The best cure for loneliness is solitude.
-Marianne Moore
 
Language has created the word loneliness
to express the pain of being alone,
and the word solitude
to express the glory of being alone.
-Paul Tillich
 
Loneliness is poverty of self;
solitude is richness of self.
-May Sarton 

Lying

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade.
-George Gordon Byron
 
Every lie is an aspect of the Truth.
-Anthony Paul Moo-Young, "Mooji"
 
One may sometimes tell a lie,
but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
 
If you're lying, you're lying.
-John C. Maxwell
 
A white lie
will turn coal black in telling
-The Occulatum

A multitude of words cloaks a lie.
-Nigerian Proverb
 
Lying is done with words
and also with silence.
-Adrienne Rich

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
-Adlai Stevenson
 
I never lie because I don't fear anyone.
You only lie when you are afraid.
-John Gotti

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear 
in one form or another.
-Aleister Crowley

Anytime you catch folks lying,
they're scared of something!
-Zora Neale Hurston
 
No one lies so boldly
as the man who is indignant.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
 
It takes two to lie.
One to lie and one to listen.
-"Homer Simpson"
 
It takes two people to make a lie work:
the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.
-Jodi Picoult

Who lies for you will lie against you.
-Bosnian Proverb

Things come apart so easily
when they have been held together with lies.
-Dorothy Allison

The lie has seven endings.
-Swahili Proverb
 
Someone who always has to lie
discovers that every one of his lies is true.
-Elias Canetti

There are times when lying is the most sacred of duties.
-Eugene Marin Labiche

Even a lie is truthful
If it does unsullied good.
-Tiruvalluvar

Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
-Victor Hugo

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer
 
It is sometimes necessary to lie to others
it is despicable to lie to oneself.
-W. Somerset Maugham
 
Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie.
-George Herbert

Martyrdom

No man is worth his salt
who is not ready at all times to risk his body,
to risk his well-being, to risk his life,
in a greater cause.
-Theodore Roosevelt
 
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity,
never of the correctness of a belief.
-Arthur Schnitzler
 
Violent martyrdom for Truth's sake
is the result of zeal without wisdom.
-Charles Fillmore
 
It is not necessary to be a martyr
in the cause for Truth.
To obviate martyrdom, or useless persecution,
do not argue, do not dispute,
do not let your zeal run away with your
love and consideration for those who do not see things
from the same standpoint as you do.
-Charles Fillmore
 
Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr,
but let no one lust for martyrdom.
-Mohandas Gandhi

Melancholy

Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.
-Victor Hugo
 
It is impious in a good man to be sad.
-William Shakespeare
 
She indulged in melancholy,
that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries.
-Charles Dickens
 
Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.
-Mason Cooley
 
Never give way to melancholy;
resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
-Sydney Smith
 
I want happiness,
melancholy kills me little by little.
-Clarice Lispector

Misery

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
-Joseph Joubert
 
The misery of being always under a mask.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
 
The misery of man
proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil,
but form small vexations continually repeated.
-Samuel Johnson
 
If there is nothing to cause me misery,
I am tormented by the thought
that there must be something hidden from me.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
 
Do you not see that all your misery
comes from the strange belief that you are powerless?
-A Course in Miracles
 
To be weak is the true misery.
-Thomas Carlyle
 
The chief cause of our misery
is less the violence of our passions
than the feebleness of our virtues.
-Joseph Roux
 
If misery loves company,
misery has company enough.
-Henry David Thoreau
 
Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself loses his misery.
-Matthew Arnold

Obstinacy

Obstinacy is a result of the will
forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
 
Obstinacy is will asserting itself
without being able to justify itself.
It is persistence without a reasonable motive.
It is the tenacity of self-love
substituted for that of reason and conscience.
-Henri Frederic Amiel
 
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is,
that one often comes from a strong will,
and the other from a strong won't.
-Henry Ward Beecher
 
An obstinate man
does not hold opinions,
but they hold him.
-Joseph Butler 

Opinionatedness

Our opinions do not really blossom forth
until we have expressed them to someone else.
-Mark Twain
 
A person who expressed an opinion about another readily,
a mist is produced by his word before his own eyes;
he can see no further than what he sees.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
As our inclinations,
so our opinions.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
-Samuel Butler
 
Be very wary of opinions
that flatter your self-esteem.
-Bertrand Russell

Those who never retract their opinions
love themselves more than they love the truth.
-Jospeh Joubert

It is a serious mistake
To broadcast your opinions all the time.
Keep your wise opinions of yourself
So you can escape the ridicule 
Of the world
And also save the world
From having to tolerate your stupidity.
-Sri Chinmoy
 
Opinion is a bold bastard.
-Francis Quarles
 
If there is an opinion,
facts will be found to support it.
-Judy Spoles

I have bought golden opinions 
from all sorts of people.
-William Shakespeare
 
When thou hearest an opinion that displeases thee,
study and find out the truth in it.
-Aurobindo Ghose
 
Truth is one forever absolute,
but opinion is truth filtered through
the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
-Wendell Phillips
 
Opinion is an outcome of mind.
It is an outburst of its reasoning and judging faculty,
and so an opinion accords with the evolution of a particular mind.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
Opinions clash
when two people of different stages of evolution
express themselves.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
We may all have our private opinions
but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?
-Mohandas Gandhi
 
We cling to our own point of view,
as though everything depended upon it.
Yet our opinions have no permanence;
like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
-Chuang-tzu
 
The superior man...does not set his mind
either for anything, or against anything;
what is right he will follow.
-Confucius

Over-Sensitivity

True sensitivity is a faculty that enables us
to travel very high and very far,
and to perceive and grasp the realities
of ever subtler worlds.
Hypersensitivity on the other hand is a manifestation
of the lower nature which,
because it takes itself for the centre of the world,
feels frustrated and hurt
when others show a lack of consideration,
and consequently responds aggressively.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
 
Exaggerated sensitiveness
is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.
-Alfred Adler
 
His heart was like a sensitive plant
that opens for a moment in the sunshine,
but curls up and shrinks into itself
at the slightest touch of the finger,
or the lightest breath of wind.
-Anne Bronte
 
Don't give in too much to feelings.
An overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession
on this shaky earth.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
True sensitivity means being completely open
to the beauty and light of the divine world...
What is generally called sensitivity,
that is, our ability to feel upset
by indifference, scorn, criticism and humiliation
is in fact only susceptibility, sentimentality.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is, at its core,
about trying to earn approval and acceptance.
-Brene Brown

Perfectionism is externally driven 
by a simple but all-consuming question:
What will people think?
-Brene Brown
 
Perfectionism is just fear in really good shoes.
-Elizabeth Gilbert

Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind
in an imperfect world.
-Robert S. Hillyer
 
Perfection does not allow for feeling.
-Marion Woodman
 
We tend to get trapped
in the idea of a static perfection
that leads to rigid perfectionism.
-David Steindl-Rast
 
As a goal,
perfection is usually lethal because it is never met
and our failure leaves us with the pain of comparison.
-Jill Mellick

Powerlessness

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.
-Jane Smiley
 
It is in the interests of both sexes
to hear the other sex's experience of powerlessness.
-Warren Farrell
 
For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men,
it is that feelings of powerlessness
do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.
-Elizabeth Gilbert
 
Men are strong only so long as they represent a strong idea.
They become powerless when they oppose it.
-Sigmund Freud
 
Powerlessness consists in wanting or having to
satisfy one's social instincts through another person
whose social instincts one has not succeeded in concentrating on oneself -
one then does everything the other asks.
-Esther Vilar
 
Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness.
-Audre Lorde
 
When we feel powerless, we stop trying to find a better way.
-Walter Dean Myers
 
At times it is strangely sedative
to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
-Erica Jong
 
The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others,
nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
-Theodor Adorno
 
 A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person.
- Haruki Murakami
 
It’s that sense of powerlessness that destroyed my soul.
-Paul Coelho
 
I am living in hell from one day to the next.
But there is nothing I can do to escape.
I don't know where I would go if I did.
I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prison.
I entered of my own free will,
I locked the door, and I threw away the key.
-Haruki Murakami
 
The pain of powerlessness is excruciating.
It is the most painful experience in the earth school,
and everyone shares it.
-Gary Zukav
 
Powerlessness is an excruciating pain;
it is torture insurmountable.
-Richelle E. Goodrich
 
A feeling of insecurity, unworthiness and lack of value
is the core experience of powerlessness.
-Gary Zukav
 
Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence.
It is the hope of those who have no power.
-Hannah Arendt
 
The acknowledgment of powerlessness does empower.
-Peg O'Connor
 
What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances,
determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.
-Blaine Lee
 
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
-Paulo Freire
 
The deep root of failure in our lives is to think,
 'Oh how useless and powerless I am.'
It is essential to think strongly and forcefully,
'I can do it,' without boasting or fretting.
-Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama
 
Powerlessness implies inactivity,
like an appliance that is not plugged into its electrical current.
Empowerment is about plugging into responsible choices
and then acting upon them to your fullest capacity.
-David Kipper

Prejudice

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
-William Hazlitt
 
He flattered himself on being a man
without any prejudices;
and this pretension itself
is a very great prejudice.
-Anatole France
 
See how elastic our prejudices grow
when once love comes to bend them.
-Herman Melville
 
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
-Henry David Thoreau
 
All prejudices may be traced back to the intestines.
A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Ghost.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Pretension

Where there is much pretension,
much has been borrowed;
nature never pretends.
-Johann Kaspar Lavater
 
Pretension almost always overdoes the original,
and hence exposes itself.
-Hosea Ballou

Pride

Pride is the mask
we make of our faults.
-Hebrew Proverb

Who is it that affirms most boldly?
Who is it that holds his opinion most obstinately?
Ever he who hath most ignorance;
for he also hath most pride.
-Akhenaton

Pride is to the character,
like the attic to the house the highest part,
and generally the most empty.
-John Gay
 
Pride is pleasure
arising from man's thinking too highly of himself.
-Baruch Spinoza
 
Pride erects a little kingdom of its own,
and acts as sovereign of it.
-William Hazlitt
 
A stern and proud person,
sure of his opinion and who builds a wall of his own point of view,
is difficult to manage;
for he shuts himself by the wall of his own point of view
and covers his own eyes by his pride.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.
-James Russell Lowell

Pride is a tricky glorious double-edged feeling.
-Adrienne Rich
 
Pride, like a magnet,
constantly points to one object, self;
but, unlike a magnet,
it has not attractive pole, but at all points repels.
-Charles Caleb Colton

Pride is seldom delicate;
it will please itself with very mean advantages.
-Samuel Johnson
 
The more vanity a person has
the less sympathy he has for others,
for all his attention is given to his own satisfaction,
and he is blind toward others.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Pride is a cold, stormy, barren mountain.
-John Thornton
 
Pride, perceiving humility honorable,
often borrows her cloak.
-Thomas Fuller

All pride is willing pride.
-William Shakespeare
 
Humility is often only a feigned submission,
of which we make use to make others submissive.
It is the trickery of pride
which abases itself in order to exalt itself a thousand different ways.
It is never better disguised and more capable of deceiving
than when it conceals itself under the cloak of humility.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
 
It's not that you have to be humble.
You just have to be real.
-Georgia Nicols
 
Spiritual pride is the most dangerous
and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.
-Samuel Richardson
 
Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.
-Emily Bronte
 
In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
-John Ruskin
 
If a man has a right to be proud of anything,
it is of a good action done as it ought to be,
without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
-Laurence Stern

Problems

We only have problems we really want to have.
-Alejandro Jodorowsky

Problems are messages.
-Shakti Gawain
 
The best way to escape from a problem
is to solve it.
-Brendan Francis
 
The significant problems we face
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking
that created them.
-Albert Einstein
 
Problems in life are not solved logically on their own terms,
but fade when confronted with a new and strong life urge.
-Carl Jung
 
The greatest and most important problems of life
are all in a certain sense insolvable...
They can never be solved but only outgrown.
-Carl Jung

No problem endures the passing of time.
-Sang H. Kim
 
If there is a problem in your life that you would solve,
do not set your will to work on it.
You will conquer this problem in the end, not by fighting it,
but by understanding it.
The reasons it exists in the first place is because of the lack of understanding.
-U. S. Anderson

When you have a problem, 
see if you can find out for yourself why you have the problem.
-Shunryn Suzuki
 
Problems are all in your head.
Problems are not solved on the level of problems.
Analysing a problem to find its solution
is like trying to restore freshness to a leaf by treating the leaf itself,
whereas the solution lies in watering the root.
-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
 
The place problems exist is the mind.
-Thubten Yeshe
 
One of the nice things about problems
is that a good many of them do not exist
except in our imaginations.
-Steve Allen
 
If one allows a problem to endure
for a month or a day, or even for a few minutes,
it distorts the mind.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes,
the greater is their power to harm us.
-Voltaire
 
Real difficulties can be overcome;
it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.
-Theodore Vail
 
Drag your thought away from your troubles...
by the heels, by the ears,
or any other way you can manage it.
-Samuel Clemens, "Mark Twain"
 
The problem is not that there are problems.
The problem is expecting otherwise
and thinking that having problems is a problem.
-Theodore Isaac Rubin
 
Personal problems are never solved by dwelling on them,
but always by forgetting them in serving a larger interest.
-Sahajananda
 
All your problems and difficulties are the instructions of life,
pointing out to you where you are wrong,
where you are lacking in wisdom and understanding,
where you need to change
so that you can open yourself to a greater degree of good
than you have yet experienced.
-Elinor MacDonald
 
Most of the time when a difficult situation arises
we see it only for what it appears to be,
and fail to see it for what it really is:
an opportunity for benefits -
benefits of self awareness and personal growth.
-Wu Wei
 
Each problem has hidden in it
an opportunity so powerful
that it literally dwarfs the problem.
-Anonymous
 
There is no height to which you cannot climb,
no difficulty which you cannot overcome;
no failure which cannot be retrieved;
no disease which cannot be healed...
the difficulties and problems of life
become like rungs on the ladder
for each one raises us higher.
-Henry T. Hamblin
 
Every problem
has a gift for you in its hands.
-Richard Bach
 
Problems are only opportunities
with thorns on them.
-Hugh Miller
 
To every obstacle
oppose patience, perseverance and soothing language.
-Thomas Jefferson
 
All problems of existence
are essentially problems of harmony.
-Aurobindo Ghose
 
Most of the problems that arise in life
are due to our having said 'yes'
in situations where we should have said 'no.'
-Amma
 
Almost all human problems can be solved
by a return to your highest values
and your innermost convictions.
-Brian Tracy
 
Our problems are not in the world;
they are in our consciousness.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
Difficulties always arise from the ego,
that is from your more or less egotistic personal reaction
to circumstances, events and people round you.
They also some from that feeling of being closed up
in a sort of a shell,
which prevent your consciousness
from uniting with higher and vaster realities.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"
 
They are problems of your own making,
because you refuse to allow the spirit life
to enter in partnership with our earthly life.
-Ronald Beesley
 
All of the problems in the world
can be traced to a feeling of not being whole.
-Thubten Yeshe
 
All your problems arise because you have defined yourself
and therefore limited yourself.
When you do not think yourself to be this or that,
all conflict ceases.
-Nisaragadatta
 
Problems come from contracted state of awareness;
solutions come from expanded state of awareness.
-Deepak Chopra
 
A man cannot help going wrong and making mistakes
as long as he is ignorant of his true nature.
-Paramananda
 
The answer to life's problems
is to see "who" has them.
-Ramana Maharshi
 
To the question of your life
you are the answer,
and to the problems of your life
you are the solution.
-Joe Cordare
 
When you understand the root of problems,
they disappear of their own accord.
-Thubten Yeshe
 
It is the lack of light
which prevents our seeing into our trouble,
as well as the way out of it,
and it is the light which gives us the power
to see into our difficulty
as well as showing the way out of it.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
When you see clearly,
the problem is solved.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
The man who has no more problems to solve
is out of the game.
-Elbert Hubbard

There is no solution because there is no problem.
-Marcel Duchamp

Procrastination

Procrastination
Life, as it is called,
is for most of us one long postponement.
-Henry Miller

Put off for one day
and ten days will pass.
-Korean Proverb
 
Procrastination is the onset
of the deteriorization of the will.
-Kenneth G. Mills
 
Procrastination is the habit 
of putting off our own good.
-J. Sig Paulson

Preparing to live your dream is postponing it.
You are either living it, or not.
Quit planning your dream and start living it.
-Alan Cohen
 
Procrastination is the art
of keeping up with yesterday.
-Don Marquis
 
What is not started today
is never finished tomorrow.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
Procrastination is the bad habit
of putting off until the day after tomorrow
what should have been done the day before yesterday.
-Napoloeon Hill
 
If only I had done today
what I set out for yesterday
I'd be free tomorrow.
-Andy Munthe
 
Procrastination makes easy things hard,
hard things harder.
-Mason Cooley
 
Nothing is so fatiguing
as the eternal hanging on
of an uncompleted task.
-William James
 
When you step on the brakes
your life is in your foot's hands.
-George Carlin
 
Someday
is not a day of the week.
-Anonymous
 
The word tomorrow was invented
for indecisive people and for children.
-Ivan Turgenev
 
Tomorrow is the day
when idlers work,
and fools reform.
-Edward Young

You are fooled by your mind
into believing there is tomorrow
so that you may waste today.
-Ishin Yoshimoto

If you won't be better tomorrow
than you were today,
then what do you need tomorrow for?
-Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
 
There are those of us who are always about to live.
We are waiting until things change, until there is more time,
until we are less tired, until we get a promotion,
until we settle down - until, until, until.
It always seems as if there is some major event
that must occur in our lives before we begin living.
-George Sheehan

Tomorrow I will live, the fool does say:
today itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday.
 -Marcus Valerius Martial
 
You may delay,
but time will not.
-Benjamin Franklin
 
While we are postponing,
life speeds by.
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca
 
Procrastination is the thief of time:
Year after year it steals, till all are fled.
-Edward Young
 
Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.
-Charles Dickens

Your postponement of deeds
till the time when you are free
is one of the frivolities of the ego.
-Ibn 'Ata'illah
 
One's duty is to do now what can be done now.
Nothing one really values should one put off till tomorrow.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
The future is a result
of your procrastination.
-Kenneth G. Mills
 
Only put off  until tomorrow
what you are willing to die leaving undone.
-Unknown
 
Be wise today;
'tis madness to defer.
-Edward Young

The tragedy of life is not that is ends so soon,
but that we wait so long to begin it.
-W. M Lewis

The trouble is...you think you have time.
-Jack Kornfield
 
If not today, when?
-Kashmiri Proverb 

Quarrels

All quarrels proceed from egotism.
-Aurobindo Ghose

The beginning of a quarrel is like breaking through a dam:
as soon as it breaks through, you will not hold it back.
-Talmud

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others
as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
-William Hazlitt
 
In most quarrels there is a fault on both sides.
A quarrel may be compared to a spark,
which cannot be produced without flint, as well as steel.
Either of them, may hammer on wood forever;
no fire will follow.
-Caleb Charles Colton

Weakness on both sides,
as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
-Voltaire
 
In a quarrel, each side is right.
-Yiddish Folk Saying
 
Quarrels would not last long
if the fault was only on one side.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
 
A quarrel is quickly settled
when deserted by one party:
there is not battle unless there be two.
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca
 
When one will not quarrel, two cannot.
-Dadi Janki

Regret

Accept life, and you must accept regret.
-Henri Frederic Amiel
 
I regret nothing,
says arrogance.
I will regret nothing,
says inexperience.
-Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
 
Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue.
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton
 
It isn't the thing you do, Dear
It's the thing you leave undone
Which gives you a bit of a heartache
At the setting of the sun.
-Margaret E. Sangster
 
It is a mortifying reflection
for a man to consider
what he has done compared
with what he might have done.
-Samuel Johnson
 
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:
"It might have been!"
John Greenleaf Whittier
 
Do nothing that would make you regret,
"What have I done!"
However, if regrettable deeds do occur,
do not remain regretful.
-Tiruvalluvar
 
Chronic remorse is a most undesirable sentiment.
On no account brood over your wrongdoing.
Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
-Aldous Huxley
 
Nor mourn the unalterable Days
That Genius goes and Folly stays.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
We should only regret
when we do not live our lives fully
and in a way that is most true to ourselves.
-Deng Ming-Dao
 
Do not look back upon what you might have been.
Rather, lift up, look up, now, where you are,
-Edgar Cayce
 
I have made it a rule in my life
never to regret and never to look back.
Regret is an appalling waste of energy...
You can't build on it;
it's only good for wallowing in.
-Katharine Mansfield
 
Never regret.
If it's good it's wonderful.
If it's bad, it's experience.
-Victoria Holt
 
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
-Henry David Thoreau

Repression

Whatever is repressed in childhood
is not very well developed.
-Marion Woodman
 
Repressed energy returns to haunt us
in symbols and symptoms.
-Marion Woodman
 
We cannot kill energy.
It goes underground.
It always rises again
in another, strange way.
-Marion Woodman

Resentment

Resentment is often a woman's inner signal
that she's ignoring an important God-given responsibility -
that of making choices.
-Brenda Waggoner
 
When you hold resentment toward another,
you are bound to that person
by an emotional link that is stronger than steel.
Forgiveness is the only way
to dissolve that link and get free.
-Catherine Ponder
 
Cast out resentment
for it feeds upon itself
-The Oculatum
 
Resentment is an extremely bitter diet
and eventually poisonous.
 -Neil Kinnock
 
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly
than the passion of resentment.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Resignation

Resignation,
perhaps the most stifling word
in the language.
-Caitlin Thomas
 
What is called resignation
is confirmed desperation.
-Henry David Thoreau
 
Resignation is daily suicide.
-Honore de Balzac

Resistance

As soon as you want to progress,
you immediately meet the resistance of everything
that does not to progress
both in you and around you.
And this resistance naturally expresses itself
in all the thoughts that correspond to it.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"
 
All resistance bears within it
the seeds of growth, experience, and wisdom.
-Steve Maraboli
 
If I have resistance to something
it means there's something wrong.
The resistance to me is a sign of fear.
-Billy Corgan
 
Your resistance to change is likely to reach its peak
when significant change is imminent.
-George Leonard
 
Resistance to the disturbance
is the disturbance.
-Vernon Howard
 
Whatever you resist, persists.
-Robert Anthony
 
Paralyze resistance with persistence.
-Woody Hayes
 
At any moment we can let go of the resistance
enough to draw light in, so that we can live fully.
-Chris Griscom
 
When the resistance is gone,
so are the demons.
-Pema Chodron

Sentimentality

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading
of excessive and spurious emotion,
is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
-James Baldwin
 
Sentimentality is intellectualized emotion;
emotion precipitated, as it were,
in pretty crystals by the fancy.
-James Russell Lowell
 
Sentimentalism is the working off on yourself
of feelings you haven't really got.
-David Herbert Lawrence
 
Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
-James Joyce
 
Sentimentality is failure of feeling.
-Wallace Stevens
 
Sentimentality - that's what we call
the sentiment we don't share.
-Graham Greene

Shadow

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow.
-T. S. Eliot
 
The shadow is our share
of the imperfection of human nature.
-Carl Jung
 
Every man casts a shadow;
not his body only,
but his imperfectly mingled spirit.
-Henry David Thoreau
 
The shadows:
some hide, others reveal.
-Antonio Porchia
 
My shadow is the opposite of the "correct,"
my shadow is my error -
that shadow belongs to me,
only I possess it inside me.
-Clarice Lispector
 
Most of the shadows in this life
are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
The whole shadow of Man
is only as big as his hat.
-Elizabeth Bishop
 
Most of the time
we stand with our backs to our own light,
looking into the shadows.
-Sivananda Radha
 
Men stand in their own shadow
and wonder why it's dark.
-Zen Saying
 
You cannot escape your shadow
on a moonlit night.
-John K. Williams
 
To think of shadows
is a serious thing.
-Victor Hugo
 
Pursuit after a shadow
is pursuit after nothingness.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
 
One is forever throwing away substance
for shadows.
-Jennie Churchill
 
Many men spend their lives
in gazing at their own shadows,
and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.
-Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
 
Will I never cease
setting my heart on shadows
and following a lie?
-Saint Augustine
 
Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton
 
If we have identified too closely with the light,
have too idealized an image of ourselves,
then our shadow will surely come up
and hit us on our backside.
-Marion Woodman
 
Everyone carries a shadow
and the less it is embodied
in the individual's conscious life,
the blacker and denser it is.
-Carl Jung
 
The man who recognizes his shadow
knows very well that he is not harmless.
-Carl Jung
 
If you do not meet your shadow,
it will show up as your fate.
-Carl Jung
 
The person you call an enemy
is an exaggerated aspect of your own shadow self.
-Deepak Chopra
 
If we're ever going to get along with our mates,
we have to deal with our shadow.
-Marion Woodman
 
Some aspects of ourselves are in the light,
visible to us and others.
Other aspects, positive and negative,
are in shadow unseen by us,
even when seen by others.
These are the parts of ourselves that have been
neglected, disowned, forgotten, judged,
unrecognized, or underdeveloped.
-Jill Mellick
 
The shadow is anything
we are sure we are not;
it is part of us we do not know,
sometimes do not want to know,
most times do not want to know.
We hardly bear to look.
Look.
It may carry the best of the life
we have not lived.
-Marion Woodman
 
The Self pushes the neglected forward for recognition.
Do not disregard it.
It holds energy of highest value.
It is the gold in the dung.
Do not disregard the dung.
-Marion Woodman
 
To own one's own shadow
is to reach a holy place - an inner centre -
not attainable in any other way.
-Robert Johnson
 
You cannot cause a shadow to disappear
by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it,
of any other form of emotional or physical resistance.
In order to cause a shadow to disappear,
you must shine a light on it.
-Shakti Gawain
 
Once we've recognize our shadow,
once we've accepted it
as part of who we are,
and begun to civilize it,
we are no longer judgmental of others.
-Marion Woodman
 
God preserve me
from being reduced to my shadow.
-Marion Woodman

Shyness

Shyness is invariably a suppression of something. 
It's almost a fear of what you're capable of.
-Rhys Ifans

Shyness is inverted ego.
You do not want to expose yourself
to possible criticism.
-Silvia Demitz, "Sivananda Radha"
 
The way you overcome shyness
is to become so wrapped in something
that you forget to be afraid.
-Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson

Sin

There's nothing as artificial as sinning nowadays.
I suppose it was once real.
-D. H. Lawrence
 
To think you are separate from God is the original sin.
-Leonard Orr

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.
-Andre Gide

Sin is only the ignorance of our conditioning,
a fall from our true nature.
-David Frawley

Sin is the denial of one's own deeper nature.
-Yogananda

Being afraid is the first consciousness
of the entertaining of sin into the soul.
-Edgar Cayce

All sin is an error of the will,
a desire and act of the ignorance.
-Aurobindo Ghose

Sin is the blurring of truth
which clouds over the purity of our consciousness.
-Rabindranth Tagore

I was in that area of despair
where one is incapable of being ontological.
In my definition, this is sin.
-Madeline L'Engle
 
The only sin is self-hatred.
It is an act of negation.
-Paul Williams

Sin is a queer thing.
It isn't the breaking of divine commandments.
It is the breaking of one's own integrity.
-D. H. Lawrence

Sin is acting against one's better knowledge.
-Silvia Demitz, "Sivananda Radha"
 
Knowledge not applied is sin.
-Silvia Demitz, "Sivananda Radha"

Sin is not a distance,
it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.
-Simone Weil

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.
-Simone Weil

A "sin" is something which is not necessary.
-George Gurdjieff

Sin is what puts a man to sleep
when he has already decided to awaken.
And what puts a man to sleep?
Everything that is unnecessary,
everything that is not indispensable.
-P. D. Ouspensky
 
There's only one real sin,
and that is to persuade oneself
that the second-best is anything but the second-best.
-Doris Lessing

To those whose god is honor,
disgrace alone is sin.
-Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
 
The only sin of man is selfishness.
-Edgar Cayce

There is no sin
but the lack of love.
-Paul Coelho
 
There is only one sin,
and that is not to love enough.
-Mother Meera
 
Should we all confess our sins to one another 
we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.
-Kahlil Gibran
 
Commit the oldest sins
the newest kind of ways.
-William Shakespeare 

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.
-William Shakespeare

All human sin seems so much worse
in its consequences than in its intention.
-Reinhold Neibuhr

Men are not punished for their sins,
but by them.
-Elbert Hubbard

Nothing emboldens sin
so much as mercy.
-William Shakespeare

No person sins for someone else.
-Talmud

You never hate a brother for his sins,
but only for your own.
-A Course in Miracles

Who are you to condemn another's sin?
He who condemns sin becomes part of it,
espouses it.
-Georges Bernanos

Whoever has the capacity to pray for a neighbor and does not
is called a sinner.
-Talmud
 
We are sinful not simply because
we have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge,
but also because we haven't eaten yet from the Tree of Life.
-Franz Kafka

Sin is the fuel for virtue's fire.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Sorrow

What man is there that does not laboriously,
though all unconsciously,
himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life?
-Maurice Maeterlinck
 
Almost all our sorrows
spring out of our relations with other people.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
 
Is sorrow the way of understanding?
Or does sorrow exist because there is no understanding?
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
Joy is the transition of man from a lesser to a greater perfection.
Sorrow is the transition of man
from a greater perfection to a lesser perfection.
-Baruch Spinoza

Stress

Stress in itself is a byproduct
of not being secure in what one is doing.
-Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
 
Stressful thinking is scarcity thinking.
-Shaun de Warren

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose one thought over another.
-William James
 
Here's a two step formula for handling stress:.
Step number one: Don't sweat the small stuff.
Step number two: Remember it's all small stuff.
-Richard Carlson

Temptation

Things forbidden
have a secrete charm.
-Tacitus
 
Not fiend constant
more than temptation
-The Oculatum
 
You don't have to take everything that is offered.
As a matter of fact, you had better not.
-Harry A. Wilmer
 
If you don't take hostile bait,
you can be straight as an arrow.
-Harry A. Wilmer
 
Temptations come, as a general rule,
when they are sought.
-Margaret Oliphant
 
For every man there exists a bait
which he cannot resist swallowing.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
 
Better shun the bait
than struggle in the snare.
-John Dryden
 
The most effective defense against temptation is this:
Shut your eyes.
-Solomon Ibn Gabirol
 
If you decide that you cannot beat a temptation,
what you are really doing
is giving yourself permission to be irresponsible.
-Gary Zukav
 
'Tis one thing to be tempted,
another thing to fall.
-William Shakespeare
 
No temptation can ever be measured
by the value of its object.
-Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
 
The biggest human temptation is...
to settle for too little.
 -Thomas Merton
 
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
-T. S. Eliot
 
Good habits
grow of temptations denied
-The Ocualtum
 
We gain the strength
of the temptation we resist.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
Every moment of resistance to temptation
is a victory.
-Frederick Faber
 
I never resist temptation because I have found
that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.
-George Bernard Shaw
 
Abstinence is as easy to me
as temperance would be difficult.
-Samuel Johnson
 
No man is matriculated to the art of life
till he has been well tempted.
-George Eliot
 
The limits of our grace
are those of our temptations.
-Francois Fenelon

Temptation is the re-emergence of the old pattern
which presents itself repeatedly
until a decision is finalized and resolved.
-David R. Hawkins

Thoughtlessness

A heart that does not reflect
will speak a thoughtless word.
-Ugandan Proverb

Vice

In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.
-Jean Rostand

Our virtues and vices couple with one another,
and get children that resemble both of their parents.
-George Savile

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices
have very few virtues.
-Abraham Lincoln

He who is afraid of vice is subject to vice;
who who is addicted to vice is its captive;
he who acquaints himself with vice is the pupil of vice;
he who learns his lessons from vice, who passes through it and rises above it,
is master and conquerer.
-Hazrat Inayat Kahn

Violence

Violence is an immature and infantile reaction
and impossible to a person of culture and maturity.
It is always symptomatic of a loss of control
and marks the end of human dignity and respect,
whether it be an overt act of aggression, destruction, stealing,
or a burst of anger or an impatient word or thought,
all arising from violence of either body or mind.
It also exhausts itself quickly and has no sustained power.
-Jean C. Cooper

Violence in all its forms
can only be upheld in the name of philosophies
which, whatever their denials, limit man's life to time.
-Joseph Chiari

Wasted Life

Are we wasting our lives?
By that word 'wasting"
we mean dissipating out energy in various ways.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
It is folly to dread the thought
of throwing away life at once,
and yet have no regard to throwing it away
by parcel and piecemeal.
-John Howe
 
Life is not lost in dying.
Life is lost minute by minute,
day by dragging day.
-Stephen Vincent Benet
 
Nothing is so often irretrievably missed
as a daily opportunity.
-Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
 
And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy,
just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.
-Miguel de Unamuno
 
It is not limitations that eat the heart out,
but inaction, the knowledge of powers not used,
the sense of having failed to develop to the utmost.
-Grant Lewi
 
He who asks for nothing
but the improvement of his own nature...
is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
-Henri Frederic Amiel 

Weakness

The weakness of a soul 
is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
-Eric Hoffer

A clear eyed recognition of human weakness
is essential.
-James Davis

Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life.
-Maurice Maeterlinck
 
There are two kinds of weakness,
that which breaks and that which bends.
-James Russell Lowell
 
Growth begins when we begin
to accept our own weaknesses.
-Jean Vanier
 
No one can ever gain strength
by brooding over his own weakness.
-Paramananda
 
Build up your weaknesses
until they become your strong points.
-Knute Rockne
 
Strengthen me
by sympathizing with my strength,
not my weakness.
-Amos Bronson Alcott
 
My strength is made perfect in weakness.
-The Bible
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