Criticism should awaken our attention, not inflame our anger. We should listen to, and not flee from, those who contradict us. Truth should be our cause, no matter in what manner it comes to us.
Madame de Sablé
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 184

We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Sacred ritual chant
Keep It Simple by James Jennings, Hazelden Publishing, October 1, 1989, Google eBook, April 19 entry

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
William Safire
Daring to Be Yourself by Alexandra Stoddard, HarperCollins, May 1, 1992, page 217
• I imagine that Safire’s pithy aphorism was inspired by G. K. Chesterton’s observation in A Short History of England, John Lane Company, 1917, page 142:

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

When you live fully focused in the present, instead of always in plans and efforts for the future, things begin to flow to you from that very future, it seems. Full awareness from moment to moment seems to put you in the cosmic flow where things happen without pushing.
Elisabet Sahtouris
• From Sahtouris’ essay, Lessons in Learning to Live in the Flow: A Personal Account, written during a week’s retreat at Sequoia Seminar, the California redwood forest preserve and conference center of the Foundation for Global Community

Detachment is a plant of slow growth; if you pluck the tender plant to look for the pods, you will be disappointed.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba
1001 Pearls of Wisdom by David Ross, Chronicle Books, January 16, 2006, no. 403

Let us love and be loved: benefiting ourselves by loving, and others by being loved. We find rest in those we love, and we provide a resting place in ourselves for those who love us.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, H. Regnery, 1953, page 139

There exists in most men a poet who died young, whom the man survived.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, 1872-1886, Constable & Co., Ltd., 1927, page 31

Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living With Love, Healing, And Compassion by Mary MacKenzie, PuddleDancer Press, October 28, 2005, Google eBook, page 97

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Flight to Arras, Thomson Press, November 4, 2008, page 129

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Airman’s Odyssey, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 8, 1984, page 195

Oh, then, soul, most beautiful among all the creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved that you may go in quest of Him and be united with Him, now we are telling you that you yourself are His dwelling and His secret chamber and hiding place.
Saint John of the Cross
The Prayers of Saint John of the Cross, New City Press, 1991, page 24

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master’s presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord’s presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
Saint Francis de Sales
Seeing with the Eyes of Love: Eknath Easwaran on the Imitation of Christ by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, October 14, 1996, Google eBook, page 48

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.
Dr. Jonas Salk
Fifty American Heroes Every Kid Should Meet! by Dennis Denenberg and Lorraine Roscoe, First Avenue Editions, September 1, 2005, page 99
• According to Wikiquote, Salk actually said, “I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more,” when presented with the Congressional Medal for Distinguished Civilian Achievement on April 23, 1956. While Salk may have edited his comment himself at a later date, this quote appears to be a pithy paraphrasing of what he actually said.

It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It’s my partner.
Dr. Jonas Salk
The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making by Elizabeth Liebert, Westminster John Knox Press, August 1, 2008, Google eBook, page 70

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Bob Samples
The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness, Jalmar Press, August 1, 1993
• This quote is commonly attributed to Albert Einstein. However, according to Einstein’s Wikiquote page, this is an edited version of what Samples wrote, with a nod to Einstein, in The Metaphoric Mind:

Commonly quoted on the internet, and also in recent books such as Planetary Survival Manual by Matthew Stein (2000), p. 51. Stein’s book is the earliest published source located with that precise version of the quote, but the quote can be found in earlier Usenet posts such as this one from 1995, and other published variants of the quote using the words “sacred gift” can be found earlier. A Google book search with the date range restricted to 1900-1990 shows only a handful in the 1980s and 1970s, and several of them attribute it to The Metaphoric Mind by Bob Samples (1976), which also seems to be the earliest published variant. Samples does not provide an exact quote, but writes on page 26: “Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind was a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.” It seems as if the last sentence about worshipping the servant is just Samples’ own comment (though in later variants it became part of the supposed quote), while the earlier sentences only paraphrase something that Samples claims Einstein to have said. Einstein had many quotes about the value of intuition and imagination, but the specific word “gift” can be found in a comment remembered by János Plesch in the section Attributed from memory and posthumous publications, “When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” So, Bob Samples might have been paraphrasing that comment. Likewise Einstein had a number of quotes about the intellect being secondary to intuition, but the language of the intellect “serving” can be found in a quote from the Out of My Later Years (1950) section, “And certainly we should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve; and it is not fastidious in its choice of a leader.”

• I chose to use the edited quote because, while it deviates from the original source, it is far superior to the original quote. It has taken on a life of its own and has become a quote unto itself.

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.
George Sand
Handsome Lawrence, J. R. Osgood, 1871, Google eBook, page 30

I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree’s way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.
May Sarton
A Little Book of Thank Yous: Letters, Notes & Quotes by Addie Johnson, Conari Press, August 1, 2010, Google eBook, page 20

Our own true nature is Infinite Joy!
Always happy, Always peaceful, Always free.
Sri Swami Satchidananda
• This quote is listed on a number of websites, but I could not find it in any book

The future is not someplace we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but created, and the activity of creating them changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar
Legitimacy in the Modern State, Transaction Publishers, January 1, 1981, Google eBook, page 321

Once someone is sure that the way in which he or she sees the world is the way things are, then he or she perceives any differences of opinion as threatening. This results in a closed system and a rigid approach to life in which all differences must be discounted, disparaged, or destroyed.
Anne Wilson Schaef
Women’s Reality: An Emerging Female System, January 3, 1992, HarperOne, page 15

Every issue has its own levels of truth. Levels of truth move in a progression. As one grows and increases in awareness, her or his levels of truth move from the superficial to the more profound.
Anne Wilson Schaef
Women’s Reality: An Emerging Female System, January 3, 1992, HarperOne, page 158

You are a drop of God in a sea of God.
Donald Schnell
• First used at the Power of Love seminar that Schnell and his wife, Marilyn Diamond, conducted in Miami in 1998; confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life, translated by T. Bailey Saunders, Echo Library, 2006, page 62

Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can’t bring down.
Olive Schreiner
The Story of an African Farm, Volume 1, Chapman and Hall, 1890, Google eBook, page 222

Commit yourself to a dream. . . . Nobody who tries to do something great but fails is a total failure. Why? Because he can always rest assured that he succeeded in life’s most important battle—he defeated the fear of trying.
Robert H. Schuller
Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do!, Random House Digital, Inc., 1984, page 196

You’ve got to look hard for the sparks of divinity in the ashes of atrocity.
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology, Beacon Press, 1947, Google eBook, page 164

Reincarnation contains a most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe.
Albert Schweitzer
Reincarnation in World Thought by Joseph Head, Julian Press, 1967, page 130

My God! grant that my bounty may be a clear and transparent river, flowing from pure charity, and uncontaminated by self-love, ambition, or interest.
Christian Scriver
Gotthold’s Emblems; Or, Invisible Things Understood by Things That Are Made, Gould and Lincoln, 1859, Google eBook, page 207
• Gotthold was a pseudonym of Scriver’s. In this book, on page xvii, Scriver writes:

Christian Reader! In the name of the Lord Jesus, I here present to you a collection of devout thoughts, which suggested themselves on various occasions to a fellow-pilgrim, called Gotthold, and which I received from his mouth, and have taken the pains to write down.

• For those who may be wondering, Gotthold does not refer to the German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) because Scriver (1629-1693) died before Lessing was born

People with diseases like AIDS and cancer feel an urgency in straightening out their lives, examining their purpose, and confronting the reality of death. Ironically, in spite of the physical and emotional pain they experience, many of these patients express gratitude for this opportunity. The encounter with their own mortality changes their priorities in life, their values and aspirations. For many, it makes them truly cherish life and the ability to give and receive love.
Jeff Seibert
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 371

“Realistic people” who pursue “practical aims” are rarely as realistic and practical, in the long run of life, as the dreamers who pursue only their dreams.
Hans Selye
The Stress of Life, McGraw-Hill, 1984, page 445

There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Seneca’s Morals, printed for S. Crowder, R. Baldwin, and B. Collins, 1793, Google eBook, page 41

Every guilty person is his own hangman.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Seneca’s Morals, printed for S. Crowder, R. Baldwin, and B. Collins, 1793, Google eBook, page 146

It is never too late to learn what it is always necessary to know.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Seneca’s Morals, printed for S. Crowder, R. Baldwin, and B. Collins, 1793, Google eBook, page 316

Wherever there is a human being, there exists the opportunity for an act of kindness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Dialogues and Essays, translated by John Davie, editorial material by Tobias Reinhardt, Oxford University Press, January 9, 2008, Google eBook, page 106

Many men would have attained to wisdom had they not supposed they had already done so.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Dialogues and Essays, translated by John Davie, editorial material by Tobias Reinhardt, Oxford University Press, January 9, 2008, Google eBook, page 114

We do not fail to dare because [hardships] are difficult, but they are difficult because we do not dare.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Selected Letters, translated by Elaine Fantham, Oxford University Press, May 15, 2010, Google eBook, page 225

Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty; the difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Volume 3, Harvard University Press, 1962, page 205

Aye, the willing soul Fate leads, but the unwilling drags along.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Paul and Seneca, edited by J. N. Sevenster, E. J. Brill, 1961, page 44

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations, Funk & Wagnalls, 1894, page 548

Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.
Maurice Setter
Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before—and After—You Marry by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, Zondervan, May 11, 2009, Google eBook

Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.
Anne Sexton
• Although this quote is listed on numerous websites, I have not been able to source it directly to Sexton’s own writings

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.
Anne Sexton
The Ultimate Girls’ Guide to Understanding and Caring for Your Bodyby Isabel Lluch and Emily Lluch, WS Publishing Group, June 16, 2009, Google eBook, page 45
• Although this quote is listed in numerous books, I have not been able to source it directly to Sexton’s own writings

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.
Elif Shafak
The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi, Penguin, February 18, 2010, Google eBook

Enlightenment must come little by little—otherwise it would overwhelm.
Idries Shah
The Sufis, Anchor, January 5, 1971, page 140

The world needs all of our power and love and energy, and each of us has something to give. The trick is to find it and use it, to find it and give it away, so there will always be more. We can be lights for each other, and through each other’s illumination we will see the way. Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always spring.
Merle Shain
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 127

Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners.
William Shakespeare
Othello, Perfection Learning, August 1, 2004, Act I, Scene III, dialogue spoken by Iago, page 71

I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.
William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of King Richard II, Clarendon Press, 1869, Google eBook, Act V, Scene IV, dialogue spoken by Bolingbroke, page 77

If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?
Shantideva
Single Mother in Charge: How to Successfully Pursue Happiness by Sandy Chalkoun, ABC-CLIO, June 2, 2010, page 50
• This book sources the quote to Shantideva’s book, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life

You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman, Brentano’s, 1905, Google eBook, page 233

Take care to do what you like or you will be forced to like what you do.
George Bernard Shaw
• This is a popular variation of the following passage from Man and Superman, Brentano’s, 1905, Google eBook, page 242:

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
George Bernard Shaw
Major Barbara, Brentano’s, 1917, Google eBook, Act III, dialogue spoken by Undershaft, page 132

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman and Three Other Plays, Spark Educational Publishing, December 15, 2003, letter to Arthur Bingham Walkley, page 327

Pardon him . . . he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
George Bernard Shaw
Caesar and Cleopatra, Brentano’s, 1906, Google eBook, Act II, dialogue spoken by Caesar, page 35

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw
Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Constable, 1906, Google eBook, Act II, dialogue spoken by Vivie, page 193

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
George Bernard Shaw
Collected Letters: 1874-1897, Viking, 1985, page 828

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
The American Review of Reviews, Volume XLIII, January-June, 1911, page 425
Shaw said this in the course of a private conversation as recorded by Professor Henderson.

If you are doing something you would do for nothing, then you are on your way to salvation. And if while you are doing it you are transported into another existence, there is no need for you to worry about the future.
Dr. George Sheehan
Dr. Sheehan on Running, World Publications, 1975, page 187

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.
Gail Sheehy
Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, Random House Digital, Inc., January 10, 2006, page 499

Life is like a cash register in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.
Fulton J. Sheen
The Electronic Christian: 105 Readings from Fulton J. Sheen, Macmillan, 1979, page 249

Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits.
Fulton J. Sheen
Way to Happiness: An Inspiring Guide to Peace, Hope and Contentment, Garden City Books, 1954, page 16

I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are, in themselves, arguments more conclusive than any which can be advanced, that some vast intellect animates infinity.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1912, letter dated January 3, 1811, to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, page 29

The Game of Life is a game of boomerangs. Man’s thoughts, deeds and words return to him sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.
Florence Scovel Shinn
The Game of Life—And How to Play It, Arc Manor LLC, March 31, 2008, Google eBook, page 38

Man can only receive what he sees himself receiving.
Florence Scovel Shinn
The Collected Writings of Florence Scovel Shinn. Wilder Publications, January 30, 2008, page 12

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.
General Eric Shinseki
Fast Company: The Rules of Business: 55 Essential Ideas to Help Smart People (and Organizations) Perform at Their Best by John A. Byrne, Random House Digital, Inc., October 18, 2005, Google eBook, page 7

Relationships are a day-to-day work of art.
William Shockley
• Although this quote is listed on a handful of websites, I am still hoping to source it more definitively

Trouble is part of your life, and if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you enough chance to love you enough.
Dinah Shore
The New Intimacy: Discovering the Magic at the Heart of Your Differences by Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, HCI, September 3, 1997, page 277

My narrative:
Your “misfortune” may also be a form of protection. Dr. Bernie Siegel tells the story of a man racing to the airport to catch a plane for an important business meeting. His tire blows out on the freeway; by the time he changes it his flight is long gone. Frenzied and disheveled, he curses the gods, only to find out later that the plane crashed and all aboard had perished. That flat tire turned out to be a life-saving gift, one that undoubtedly sparked an intense period of reflection and reassessment.
• Siegel tells this fictional story in Peace, Love & Healing: Bodymind Communication and the Path to Self-Healing: An Exploration, HarperCollins, May 4, 1990, page 63. In this excerpt, Siegel and his wife are the central characters of the story; I heard him tell the story about an unidentified man during a lecture.

Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires—disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Dr. Bernie Siegel
Peace, Love & Healing: Bodymind Communication and the Path to Self-Healing: An Exploration, HarperCollins, May 4, 1990, page 63

I am convinced that unconditional love is the most powerful known stimulant of the immune system. If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same changes happen automatically. The truth is: love heals.
Dr. Bernie Siegel
Love, Medicine & Miracles: Lessons Learned About Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience With Exceptional Patients, HarperCollins, May 4, 1990, page 181

My narrative:
Rare is the soul who serenely reframes burdens as blessings even as they unfold. As Dr. Bernie Siegel points out, “It’s not like you get hit by a truck, wake up in the hospital in a body cast, and shout, ‘Thank you, God!’”
• Confirmed and approved by Siegel via e-mail

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Beverly Sills
The Courage to Act: 5 Factors of Courage to Transform Business by Merom Klein and Rod Napier, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, June 1, 2003, page 135

Dreams always come one or two sizes too big so you can grow into them.
Dan Clark
Puppies for Sale, and Other Inspirational Tales by Dan Clark with Michael Gale, HCI, November 1, 1997, page 66
• Confirmed and approved by the author via phone

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
Alan Simpson
Alan K. Simpson—Nothing Else Matters, Wyoming PBS Documentaries, 2:01

We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die. Our hate does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die—for it is a parasite sucking ourblood, not theirs. There is only one remedy for it.
Lewis B. Smedes
Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, HarperCollins, May 17, 1996, page 23

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.
Lewis B. Smedes
Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, HarperCollins, May 17, 1996, page 29

When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
Lewis B. Smedes
Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, HarperCollins, May 17, 1996, page 79

The gift of being forgiven and love’s power to forgive are like yin and yang. Each needs the other to exist. To receive the gift without using the power is absurd; it is like exhaling without inhaling or like walking without moving your legs.
Lewis B. Smedes
Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, HarperCollins, May 17, 1996, page 150

When we forgive we ride the crest of love’s cosmic wave; we walk in stride with God.
Lewis B. Smedes
Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, HarperOne, second edition, September 25, 2007, Postlude, page 152

To heal the wounded memory is as natural to the human spirit as it is for the cells of the human body to heal themselves.
Lewis B. Smedes
The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How, Ballantine Books, fourth edition, August 12, 1997, page 62

I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain. . . . And their instant forgiving only makes things worse. . . . People who have been wronged badly and wounded deeply should give themselves time and space before they forgive. . . . There is a right moment to forgive. We cannot predict it in advance; we can only get ourselves ready for it when it arrives.
Lewis B. Smedes
The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How, Random House Publishing Group, August 12, 1997, pags 137-138, 140

When we forgive, we set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner we set free is us.
Lewis B. Smedes
The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How, Random House Publishing Group, August 12, 1997, pag 178

To be worth anything, character must be capable of standing firm upon its feet in the world of daily work, temptation, and trial; and able to bear the wear-and-tear of actual life.
Samuel Smiles
Character, Belford, Clarke & Co., 1881, Google eBook, page 372

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune.
Samuel Smiles
Self-Help, John Murray, 1906, Google eBook, page 338

Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
Betty Smith
Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom: A Collection of 10,000 Inspirational Quotations by Andy Zubko, Motilal Banarsidass Publications, January 1, 2000, page 129
• Multiple sources attribute this quote to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I have not yet been able to locate it there.

Seen from a divine perspective, God is the center of the universe, and that center is everywhere. In those moments when you feel most deeply in touch with God, you naturally experience yourself as being at the very center of everything.
Huston Smith
Guideposts magazine, May 2008, “At the Center” by Ptolemy Tompkins

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Logan Pearsall Smith
• According to Wikiquote, this quote is in Smith’s book, Afterthoughts, in the section titled “Art and Letters”

Those who have suffered
understand suffering
and thereby extend their hand.
Patti Smith
• Lyrics to a song from the Patti Smith Group’s album, Easter. The song was written by Smith and Lenny Kaye.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
Socrates
Apology by Plato, United Holdings Group, Google eBook

It is better to suffer wrong than do it.
Socrates
On Ancient Philosophy by John Peterman, Cengage Learning, 2008, page 135

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
Socrates
The Correspondent, Volume 4, George Houston, 1829, Google eBook, page 323

My narrative:
Socrates stated more than twenty-four hundred years ago that “learning” could be more accurately described as “remembering.”
• In Refined Behavior: A Manual for Barbarians by Mizencole Nut, iUniverse, October 1, 2003, page 29, Nut writes:

In Plato’s famous dialogue, Meno, Socrates “helps” a slave boy recall the Pythagorean theorem (which equates the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle to the sum of the squares of the other sides), thereby demonstrating the Socratic contention that learning is really a process of remembering.

When life looks like it’s falling apart, it may just be falling in place.
Beverly Solomon
Good Housekeeping, August 2009, page 128

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, An Experiment in Literary Investigation, HarperCollins, August 7, 2007, page 168

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In Working Order: Essays Presented to G.S.N. Luckyj by George Stephen Nestor Luckyj, edited by E. N. Burstynsky and Ralph Lindheim, CIUS Press, 1990, page 270
• Solzhenitsyn wrote this in a letter on the subject of justice to three students who had visited him previously

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
George Soros
Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve by George Soros with Byron Wien and Krisztina Koenen, John Wiley and Sons, August 18, 1995, page 11

Manifestation is not magic. It is a process of working with natural principles and laws in order to translate energy from one level of reality to another.
David Spangler
The Laws of Manifestation, Weiser Books, February 9, 2009, page 56

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Baruch Spinoza
A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor by Caroline Stoessinger, Random House Digital, Inc., March 20, 2012, page 129

Karma is not just about the troubles, but also about surmounting them.
Rick Springfield
• Although this quote is attributed to Springfield on thousands of websites, I am still hoping to source it more definitively

Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Brilliants: Selected from the Works of C.H. Spurgeon, Cassino, 1892, Google eBook, page 20

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
Madame de Staël
Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, International Printing and Publishing Office, 1884, Google eBook, page 121

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men, and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was inspiration; whose memory a benediction.
Bessie Anderson Stanley
• The Border Magazine, Volume 11, edited by William Sanderson, Carter & Pratt, 1906, Google eBook, page 151
• According to Wikipedia, Stanley wrote this in 1904 for a contest held in Brown Book Magazine by George Livingston Richards Co. of Boston. Stanley, who lived in Kansas, submitted the words in the form of an essay, rather than as a poem. The competition was to answer the question “What is success?” in one hundred words or less (her essay is exactly one hundred words). Stanley won the first prize of $250.
• A shorter version of Stanley’s essay appeared in Heart Throbs, Volume 2, edited by Joe Mitchell Chapple, Chapple Pub. Co., 1911, Google eBook, pages 1-2. This version was subsequently picked up by other publications and propagated in error.

God gives you the dots. Connecting them is up to you.
Dane Stauffer
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

Do what you love, the debt will follow.
Dane Stauffer
From Satuffer’s one-man musical, I’m Ready to Talk About My Narcissism; confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

If God asks that you bend, bend and do not complain. He is making you more flexible, and for this be thankful.
Meriel Stelliger
Paws for Reflection: Devotions for Dog Lovers by M. R. Wells, Kris Young, Connie Fleishauer, Harvest House Publishers, July 15, 2009, Google eBook, page 98

When I do and say what everyone says and does, then no one calls me irresponsible. But at that time, I am.
Barry Stevens
Person to Person: The Problem of Being Human: A New Trend in Psychology, Real People Press, 1967, page 32

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
Robert Louis Stevenson
An Inland Voyage, C. Scribner, 1912, Google eBook, page 21

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
Robert Louis Stevenson
An Inland Voyage, C. Scribner, 1912, Google eBook, page 127

Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 7, edited by Charles Curtis Bigelow and Temple Scott, F.J. Quinby company, 1906, Google eBook, page 185

Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.
Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Samuel French, Inc., 1967, Act I, dialogue spoken by Player, page 21
• One word in this quote has been tweaked for context. The original dialogue reads:

. . . if you look on every every exit being an entrance somewhere else.

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Oldtown Folks, Fields, Osgood, and Co., 1869, Google eBook, page 507

To think you are separate from God is to remain separate from your own being.
D. M. Street
The Hidden Souls of Words: Keys to Transformation Through the Power of Words by Mary Cox Garner, SelectBooks, Inc., 2004, page 112

Let God love you through others and let God love others through you.
D. M. Street
Could It Be That Simple? by Tamara Bracken, Xulon Press, 2006, page 142

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of our existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being.
David Steindl-Rast
Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day by David Steindl-Rast and Sharon Lebell, Ulysses Press, November 30, 2001, page 64

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy— because we will always want to have something else or something more.
Brother David Steindl-Rast
Strategies for Happiness: How to Achieve Your Happiness Potential by Donna Hedley, Sassy Sunflower Books, 2009, page 34

The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poem: “Renascence”
The Collected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC., August 31, 2007, page 43

Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself.
Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shambhala Publications, October 10, 2006, page 41

For Zen students a weed is a treasure.
Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shambhala Publications, October 10, 2006, page 152

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.
Shunryu Suzuki
The Zen Path Through Depression by Philip Martin, HarperCollins, August 11, 2009, Google eBook, page 14

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.
Emanuel Swedenborg
The Apocalypse Explained: Chapters XVII-XX, American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society, 1912, Google eBook, no. 1180, page 274

Conscience is God’s presence in man.
Emanuel Swedenborg
Popular paraphrasing from Arcana Cœlestia, Volume 5, American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society, 1873, Google eBook, page 57:

Conscience is a new will and a new understanding from the Lord; thus it is the Lord’s presence with man.

We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.
Ben Sweetland
55 Teaching Dilemmas: Ten Powerful Solutions to Almost Any Classroom Challenge by Kathy Paterson, Pembroke Publishers Limited, September 30, 2005, page 95

Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings, which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple with them.
Madame Swetchine
The Lady’s Friend, Volume 7, edited by Mrs. Henry Peterson, Deacon & Peterson, 1870, Google eBook, page 578

A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.
Jonathan Swift
The Works of Jonathan Swift, Washbourne, 1841, Google eBook, page 285

Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitude toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it. I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there’s no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.
Charles R. Swindoll
• The first appearance of the first version of this quote was in Swindoll’s book, Strengthening Your Grip. Since then, Swindoll has regularly revised the quote. The version presented here is the up-to-the-minute official version per Swindoll’s organization, Insight for Living

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
The Scientist Speculates: An Anthology of Partly-Baked Ideas, edited by Irving John Good, Heinemann, 1962, page 15

The mental images you form must absolutely support what you want to create and should be visualized with as much detail and clarity as possible. If you give equal time to images contrary to your objective, it would be like trying to dig a hole and fill it at the same time.
Dr. Tae Yun Kim
Seven Steps to Inner Power, Jung SuWon Martial Art Academy, 1991, page 58

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume One: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, pages 14-15

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.
He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.
He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume One: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 20

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume One: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 83

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume One: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 174

Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 404

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 438

While God waits for His temple to be built of love, men bring stones.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 442

I touch God in my song
as the hill touches the far-away sea
with its waterfall.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 443

He who does good comes to the temple gate,
he who loves reaches the shrine.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 446

God loves to see in me, not his servant, but himself who serves all.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 456

Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two: Poems, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 463

I believe in a spiritual world—not as anything separate from this world—but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Four: Essays, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 407

The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
Rabindranath Tagore
The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Five: Essays, edited by Mohit Kumar Ray, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, January 1, 2007, page 218

The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.
Rabindranath Tagore
Stray Birds, Forgotten Books, page 34

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
Rabindranath Tagore
Stray Birds, Forgotten Books, page 49

Do not say, “It is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.
Rabindranath Tagore
Stray Birds, Forgotten Books, page 61

In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeam and the stars of midnight.
Rabindranath Tagore
The Gardener, Macmillan, 1916, Google eBook, page 129

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, September 27, 2005, page 49

Our daily worship of God is not really the process of gradual acquisition of him, but the daily process of surrendering ourselves, removing all obstacles to union and extending our consciousness of him in devotion and service, in goodness and in love.
Rabindranath Tagore
Sadhana, 1916, Google eBook, page 149

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.
Rabindranath Tagore
Simple Pleasures of Friendship: Celebrating the Ones We Love collected by Susannah Seton, Conari Press, November 1, 2003, Google eBook

God wants to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hand.
Rabindranath Tagore
Treasures of the Transformed Life: Satisfying Your Soul’s Thirst for More by John Ed Mathison, Abingdon Press, August 1, 2006, page 115

The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you that must raise your sails.
Rabindranath Tagore
What Would You Do for Love if You Had No Fear?: Loving Without Losing—Your Mind by Diane Conway, New World Library, December 30, 2005, page 131

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.
Rabindranath Tagore
The Inspiration of Angels: For Better Choice in Daily Living by Robert Rich Mariner, CreateSpace, April 25, 2011, page 124

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
Sacred Sanskrit Words: For Yoga, Chant, and Meditation by Leza Lowitz and Reema Datta, Stone Bridge Press, September 1, 2004, page 180

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.
Rabindranath Tagore
Coming for to Carry Me Home by Wendy Hayhurst, Venus Group Publishing, 2010, page 25

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
Rabindranath Tagore
The Unidentified by Trenton Jacob Hughes, CreateSpace, July 28, 2011, page 2

To receive everything, one must open one’s hands and give.
Taisen Deshimaru
Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection by Gregg Krech, Stone Bridge Press, Inc., November 1, 2001, Google eBook, page 186

Curses and blessings do not come through gates, but man himself invites their arrival.
T’ai-shang Kan-ying P’ien
T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien: Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Forgotten Books, 1944, page 10

He who forces time is forced back by time but he who yields to time finds time standing at his side.
The Talmud
The Babylonian Talmud, edited by Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein, Soncino Press, 1938, page 86

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”
The Talmud
The Early Days of the Little Monk: The Seventh Gift by Harry Farra, Paulist Press, September 1, 1999, Google eBook, page 37
• This is a popular paraphrasing of a well-known Midrash (an interpretation of Jewish texts) that states, according to Sefer Yetzirah: Book of Creation, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Weiser Books, May 1, 1997, page 169:

There is no blade of grass that does not have a constellation (Mazal) over it, telling it to grow.

Another interpretation can be found in The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution by Rabbi Natan Slifkin, Zoo Torah, July 18, 2006, page 58:

There is no blade of grass in this world below that does not have someone appointed over it in the world above, who smites it and tells it, “Grow!”

Would that life were like the shadow cast by a wall or a tree; but it is like the shadow of a bird in flight.
The Talmud
Everyman’s Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages by Abraham Cohen, BN Publishing, 2007, page 74

He who prays for his neighbor will be heard for himself.
The Talmud
An Editor’s Treasury: A Continuing Anthology of Prose, Verse, and Literary Curiosa, Part 1, Volume 2, edited by Herbert Raymond Mayes, Atheneum, 1968, page 1764

When a person does a good deed when he doesn’t have to, God looks down and says, “For this moment alone, it was worth creating the world.”
The Talmud
Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, Random House Digital, Inc., October 19, 2010, page 75

Revenge . . . is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.
Rev. Jeremy Taylor
The Whole Sermons of Jeremy Taylor, A. & C. Black, 1841, Google eBook, page 304

In every crisis there is a message. Crises are nature’s way of forcing change—breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place.
Susan L. Taylor
The Words of Extraordinary Women, edited by Carolyn Warner, ReadHowYouWant.com, October 8, 2010, page 111

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.
Sara Teasdale
Poem: “The Philosopher”
Good Housekeeping, Volume 63, 1916, page 40

The child who acts unlovable is the child who most needs to be loved.
Cathy Rindner Tempelsman
Child-Wise, HarperCollins Publishers, October 30, 1995, page 88
• Tempelsman was actually quoting her mother in this passage

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there.
William Temple
Christian Faith and Life, SCM Press, 1963, page 118

Faith is like radar that sees through the fog—the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.
Corrie ten Boom
Life Lessons from Corrie Ten Boom by Corrie ten Boom and Pam Rosewell Moore, Chosen Books, 2004, page 16

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.
Corrie ten Boom
Clippings From My Notebook, Thorndike Press, 1983, page 43

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.
Emmanuel Teney
Things Will Get as Good as You Can Stand (. . . When You Learn That it Is Better to Receive Than to Give) by Laura Doyle, Simon and Schuster, March 30, 2004, page 56

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Poem: “GEnone”
The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson, Harper & Brothers, 1872, Google eBook, page 26

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Idylls of the King, T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1892, Google eBook, pages 354-355

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Poem: “In Memoriam A. H. H.”
Poems of Alfred Tennyson, J.E. Tilton and Co., 1866, Google eBook, page 316

Strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your own heart.
Saint Teresa of Avila
Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, ICS Publications, 1980, page 173

It constantly happens that the Lord permits a soul to fall so that it may grow humbler.
Saint Teresa of Avila
The Letters of Saint Teresa of Jesus: Volume 2, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1966, page 713

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
Saint Teresa of Avila
Teachers of Wisdom by Igor Kononenko and Irena Kononenko, Dorrance Publishing, May 6, 2010, page 113

Prayer is, for me, an outburst from the heart; it is a simple glance darted upwards to Heaven; it is a cry of gratitude and of love in the midst of trial as in the midst of joy!
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
According to this website, which is dedicated to St. Therese, this quote is from Thérèse’s autobiography Story of a Soul. I have not yet been able to locate it there.

To love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray: Pendennis, The Jenson Society: printed for members only, The University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1907, Google eBook, page 210

Thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.
Francis Joseph Thompson
Poem: “The Mistress of Vision”
Selected Poems of Francis Thompson, Methuen, 1908, Google eBook, page 71

God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: Or Life in the Woods, H. Altemus, 1899, page 111

It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: Or Life in the Woods, H. Altemus, 1899, page 362

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: Or Life in the Woods, H. Altemus, 1899, page 364

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: Or Life in the Woods, H. Altemus, 1899, page 364

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: Or Life in the Woods, H. Altemus, 1899, page 367

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden: Or Life in the Woods, H. Altemus, 1899, page 372

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence above language.
Henry David Thoreau
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Forgotten Books, page 289

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles, Heron Dance Art Studio, October 1, 2006

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Henry David Thoreau
The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, in Fourteen Volumes Bound as Two: Volumes VIII -XIV (November, 1855-1861), edited by Bradford Torrey and F. H. Allen, Courier Dover Publications, June 1, 1962, page 39

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau
The Heart of Thoreau’s Journal, edited by Odell Shepard, Courier Dover Publications, June 1, 1961, July 25, 1839 entry, page 9

Love must be as much a light as a flame.
Henry David Thoreau
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Familiar Letters, edited by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906, page 200

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
Jumping on Water: Awaken Your Joy—Empower Your Life by Ted Karam, Dog Ear Publishing, December 30, 2008, page 4

Let’s not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
Lanterns & Lances, Harper Colophon Books, 1981, page xv

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the end of strings that somebody else pulls.
Howard Thurman
You Can Make It Happen Every Day by Stedman Graham, Simon and Schuster, June 3, 1998, page 16
• This book states that Thurman said these words in a speech to Spelman College students in 1981

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
Processmind: A User’s Guide to Connecting with the Mind of God by Arnold Mindell, Quest Books, November 1, 2010, page 224
• According to Wikipedia, Gil Bailie states in his book, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Crossroad Publishing Company, November 1, 1996, that Thurman said these words to him during a conversation

Our language has wisely sensed those two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
Paul Tillich
The Eternal Now, Scribner, 1963, page 11

We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.
Paul Tillich
The New Being, University of Nebraska Press, June 1, 2005, page 10

The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich
Everyday Enlightenment: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth by Dan Millman, Hachette Digital, Inc., April 1, 1998, Google eBook

My narrative:
As soon as you step aside and clear the way for, as spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle termed it, “the knower in you who dwells behind the thinker,” you ratchet up your consciousness and loosen your ego’s grip on your conscience.
• In The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle, ReadHowYouWant.com, April 21, 2010, page xv, Tolle writes:

Moreover, since every person carries the seed of enlightenment within, I often address myself to the knower in you who dwells behind the thinker, the deeper self that immediately recognizes spiritual truth, resonates with it, and gains strength from it.

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, pages 35-36

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 45

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 46

To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, pages 48-49

Through self-observation, more presence comes into your life automatically. The moment you realize you are not present, you are present.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 55

When you become conscious of Being, what is really happening is that Being becomes conscious of itself. When Being becomes conscious of itself—that’s presence. Since Being, consciousness, and life are synonymous, we could say that presence means consciousness becoming conscious of itself, or life attaining self-consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 98

The more consciousness you bring into the body, the stronger the immune system becomes. It is as if every cell awakens and rejoices.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 123

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 154

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 188

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 205

When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 222

Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating?
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 223

God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, New World Library, first edition, September 29, 2004, hardcover, page 224

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 41

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 64

In form, you are and will always be inferior to some, superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 109

There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 115

Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 119

The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and so will often misinterpret it. It will say that you are uncaring, distant, have no compassion, are not relating. The truth is, you are relating but at a level deeper than thought and emotion. In fact, at that level there is a true coming together, a true joining that goes far beyond relating. In the stillness of Presence, you can sense the formless essence in yourself and in the other as one. Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 177

Both abundance and scarcity are inner states that manifest as your reality.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 192

The essence of who you are is consciousness. When consciousness (you) becomes completely identified with thinking and thus forgets its essential nature, it loses itself in thought.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 272

[Profound change] may be initiated . . . not through an agonizing decision-making process but by a sudden realization or recognition: This is what I have to do. The decision arrives ready-made, so to speak. It comes through awareness, not through thinking.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 273

Not what you do but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin, Reprint edition, January 30, 2008, paperback, page 294

You are that awareness disguised as a person.
Eckhart Tolle
Stillness Speaks, New World Library, October 5, 2010, Google eBook, page 3
• The paragraph directly preceding this quote is, “Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.”

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace, Volume 2, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, Digireads.com Publishing, January 30, 2009, page 292

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, Wm. Heinemann, London, 1917, Google eBook, page 62

As we have thousands of dreams in this life, so this our life is one of thousands of such lives, into which we enter from this more real, actual, true life, from which we emerge, entering into this life, and to which we return, when we die. Our life is one of the dreams of that more real life, and so forth, ad infinitum, up to the one, last, real life,—the life of God.
Leo Tolstoy
The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy, Volume 19, J. M. Dent & Co., 1905, Google eBook, page 193

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy
The Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon by Mark Bryan, Julia Cameron and Catherine Allen, HarperCollins, May 19, 1999, page 160
• I am still hoping to source this to Tolstoy’s own writings

Don’t seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.
Leo Tolstoy
If God Is Your Co-Pilot, Switch Seats: Miracles Happen When You Let Go! by B. J. Gallagher, Hampton Roads Publishing, May 1, 2011, Google eBook, page 42
• I am still hoping to source this to Tolstoy’s own writings

We see things not as they are, but as we are ourselves.
Henry M. Tomlinson
Out of Soundings, Ayer Publishing, 1931, Google eBook, page 149

Many ordinary illnesses are nothing but the expression of a serious dissatisfaction with life.
Paul Tournier
The Adventure of Living, Harper & Row, 1979, page 57

Sickness may be the solemn occasion of God’s intervention in a person’s life.
Paul Tournier
The Healing of Persons, Harper & Row, January 1, 1965, page 198

The subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind. With the utmost fidelity it reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective mind impresses upon it.
Thomas Troward
The Wisdom of Thomas Troward: The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science; Dore Lectures on Mental Science; The Law and the Word; The Creative Process in the Individual, Volume 1, Wilder Publications, September 1, 2007, page 16

Some not only have closed their minds to new truth, but they sit on the lid.
Dale Turner
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 467

God without you won’t; you without God can’t.
Desmond Tutu
1999 speech in Cape Town, South Africa
Tutu actually misquoted Saint Augustine, who wrote in 416, “God made you without you; He doesn’t justify you without you.”
An alternate translation of Saint Augustine’s quote is, “God created you without you, but God will not save you without you.”

My narrative:
If anyone was boxed in, it was Tererai Trent. Forbidden to attend school in her rural Zimbabwe village due to her gender, Trent was married off at eleven and bore three children to a husband who beat her. She dreamed of going to America and earning a B.S., a Master’s, and a Ph.D. She wrote those dreams on a piece of paper, which she placed in a scrap of tin and buried under a rock in a pasture.
and
In 1998, seven years after committing her dreams to paper, Trent, her husband (who was later deported for abuse), and their five children moved to Oklahoma. After earning her B.S., Trent returned to Zimbabwe, dug up the tin and checked off that dream. She did the same after attaining her Master’s in 2003, and again in 2009 when she was awarded her Ph.D. Happily remarried, she is working as an international consultant specializing in human rights and HIV prevention.
• Confirmed and approved by the author’s manager via e-mail

In the degree that we are filled with this Spirit of Peace by thus opening ourselves to its inflow does it pour through us, so that we carry it with us wherever we go. In the degree that we thus open ourselves do we become magnets to attract peace from all sources; and in the degree that we attract and embody it in ourselves are we able to give it forth to others. We can in this way become such perfect embodiments of peace that wherever we go we are continually shedding benedictions.
Ralph Waldo Trine
In Tune with the Infinite, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1897, Google eBook, page 141

The attainment of enlightenment from ego’s point of view is extreme death, the death of self, the death of me and mine, the death of the watcher. It is the ultimate and final disappointment.
Chögyam Trungpa
The Myth of Freedom, edited by John Baker and Marvin Casper, Shambhala Publications, October 11, 2005, page 9

Obscurity and a competence: That is the life that is best worth living.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s Notebook

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Dover Publications, 1894; this edition June 28, 1999, page 26

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Dover Publications, 1894; this edition June 28, 1999, page 60

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Mark Twain
Unfinished manuscript written in 1897 and first published in Mark Twain’s Which Was the Dream? and Other Symbolic Writings of the Later Years, edited by John S Tuckey, University of California Press, 1966, page 46.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Mark Twain
Although this quote is commonly attributed to Twain, I have been unable to confirm that it his

You may be the only Bible somebody else reads.
Mark Twain
Although this quote is commonly attributed to Twain, I have been unable to confirm that it his

Good judgment comes from experience. And where does experience come from? Experience comes from bad judgment.
Mark Twain
Although this quote is commonly attributed to Twain, I have been unable to confirm that it his

The time may be delayed, the manner may be unexpected, but sooner or later, in some form or other, the answer is sure to come. Not a tear of sacred sorrow, not a breath of holy desire, poured out in prayer to God, will ever be lost; but, in God’s own best time and way, it will be wafted back again in clouds of mercy, and fall in showers of blessings on you and those for whom you pray.
William Seymour Tyler
Prayer for Colleges, Google e-book, 1854, page 48

Be grateful even for hardship, setbacks, and bad people. Dealing with such obstacles is an essential part of training in the art of Peace.
Morihei Ueshiba
The Art of Peace, translated and edited by John Stevens, Shambhala, October 19, 2010, page 131

When you bow deeply to the universe, it bows back; when you call out the name of God, it echoes inside you.
Morihei Ueshiba
The Art of Peace, translated and edited by John Stevens, Shambhala, October 19, 2010, page 181

It is not the shilling that I give you that counts, but the warmth that it carries with it from my hand.
Miguel de Unamuno
Essays and Soliloquies, translated by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, A. A. Knopf, 1925, page 136

Your neighbor’s vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you.
Miguel de Unamuno
Our Lord Don Quixote: The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, With Related Essays, Princeton University Press, 1984, page 220

Preach the gospel all the time. If necessary, use words.
Unknown
Contacting God: The Path to God Through Prayer by Sheryl Hardin, Tate Publishing, October 2, 2007, page 67
• Wikiquote states that although this expression is widely attributed to Saint Francis, no published source of this quote has been located prior to the early 1990s.
• The same Wikiquote page lists an authentic Saint Francis passage that perhaps inspired this misattribution:

. . . love one another, as the Lord says: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.” And let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: “let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”
Francis of Assisi, Rule of 1221, Rule 11 – That the Brothers ought not to speak or detract, but ought to love one another.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Unknown
Tahitian Choreographies, Dance Fantasy Productions, August 1, 1989, page 36
• I was shocked to find this popular quote in a 1989 thirty-two-page booklet on Tahitian dance. I called Vicki Corona on April 17, 2012, and she said that, to the best of her knowledge, the quote was hers because she always wrote original material for the series of dance booklets she produced. However, she acknowledged in a follow-up e-mail: “While I doubt it, there is a possibility that I may have heard that verbiage before and simply went with it, or maybe it just came out from the labyrinths of my mind. Since you’re a writer, also, you know how that works when you’re in the ‘zone.”‘ Although her lack of certainty casts a shadow of doubt over her possible authorship, this book is by far the earliest publication of this quote that I could find. Conclusion: I’m not yet comfortable attributing this quote to Vicki Corona, but a solid argument could be made that it is hers.

Plan for more than you can do,
Then do it.
Bite off more than you can chew,
Then chew it.
Unknown
The Gillette Blade, Boston, January, 1918, Volume 1, Number 3, Gillette Safety Razor Company, Google eBook, page 4
• The first appearance of this verse appears to be 1918; in fact, a number of publications printed it in that year.
• A number of books published after 2004 credit Ella Williams for the last half of this verse. This book states that Williams was the CEO of Aegir Systems and was born in 1940. I suspect that Williams may have read this verse and adopted it as a motto; and that those who heard her say it assume that she had come up with it herself.

There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it behooves all of us
Not to talk about the rest of us.
Unknown, but often attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson
• The authorship of this quote was debated in this 1914 book of quotations and proverbs, and also addressed in The Yale Book of Quotations.
• Variations of the wording of this quote abound

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Unknown
This metaphor dates back hundreds of years. Click here to read Quote Investigator’s comprehensive research into its origins.

There are so many men who can figure costs, and so few who can measure values.
Unknown, but often attributed to Albert Einstein

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Unknown, but often attributed to Mark Twain. According to twainqoutes.com, the attribution cannot be verified and the quote should not be regarded as authentic

Opportunity is as scarce as oxygen; men fairly breathe it and do not know it.
Unknown, but commonly attributed to Doc Sane, which apparently is a pseudonym

Sometimes when the world is dark it is for a purpose. Otherwise you would not see the light of the tunnel you’re supposed to choose.
Unknown
• Although this quote is attributed to Krista Belles on a handful of websites, the following book by Larry Chang is the only book in which I could find it. I asked Larry via e-mail if he knew anything about Krista Belles and he replied that he did not. My search led to nothing but dead ends, which led me to conclude that Krista Belles is either a pseudonym or is simply made up.
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 40

To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.
Unknown, but attributed on various websites to Norwegian writer Arne Garborg and Thomas Chandler

No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.
Unknown
God’s Road Map for Moms, Hachette Digital, Inc., April 4, 2006, Google eBook
• This is a popular bumper sticker

Words end where truth begins.
Unknown
Wisdom for the New Millennium by Ravi Shankar, Jaico Pub. House, January 1, 2005, page 131

Too many people are ready to carry the stool when the piano needs moving.
Unknown
The Giving Heart: Unlocking the Transformative Power of Generosity in Your Life by Mary Jane Ryan, Conari Press, November 1, 2000, Google eBook, page 113

Live in such a way that those who know you but don’t know God will come to know God because they know you.
Unknown
Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Aubery, and Nancy Mitchell, HCI, 1997, page 296

Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.
Unknown
Love & Health: Twelve Physical, Mental and Spiritual Ingredients of Health by Jerry L. Ainsworth, Trafford Publishing, November 30, 2006, page 46

Security is not the absence of danger, but the presence of God, no matter what the danger.
Unknown
Standing on the Promises: A Woman’s Guide for Surviving the Storms of Life by Susan Wales, Random House Digital, Inc., May 3, 2001, Google eBook

Believe in your dreams and they may come true; believe in yourself and they will come true.
Unknown
Good Morning: 365 Positive Ways to Start Your Day by Brook Noel, Sourcebooks, Inc., December 1, 2008, page 184

Experience is the toughest teacher because she gives the test first, and then the lesson.
Unknown
The Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon by Mark Bryan, Julia Cameron and Catherine Allen, HarperCollins, May 19, 1999, page 143

The really happy man is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
Unknown
Love Heels: Tales from Canine Companions for Independence by Patricia Dibsie, Yorkville Press, 2003, page 78

Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
Unknown
The 60-Second Procrastinator: Sixty Solid Techniques to Jump-Start any Project and Get Your Life in Gear! by Jeffrey P. Davidson, Adams Media, November 1, 2003, Google eBook, page 56

Life is not fair, but life is not fair for everyone. That makes life fair.
Unknown
Look at the Bees by Joe Rukin, Lulu.com, Google eBook

If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.
Unknown
Handled: Handled, Held and Led by the Hand of God by Jana Jarvis, WestBow Press, February 1, 2012, Google eBook, page 57

The will of God will not take you where the grace of God cannot keep you.
Unknown
God’s Guidance: How It Works; How to Get It by Ray Clubb, AuthorHouse, May 9, 2011, page 111

Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. And lo, no one was there.
Unknown
House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story by Andrea Perron, AuthorHouse, March 8, 2011, Google eBook, page 305

When we lose God, it is not God who is lost.
Unknown
Treasures of the Transformed Life: Satisfying Your Soul’s Thirst for More by John Ed Mathison, Abingdon Press, August 1, 2006, page 56

When you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.
Unknown
Positive Forces in Healing: Healing from Within by Lana McNiel, AuthorHouse, August 31, 2009, Google eBook, page 392

Security is not in having things; it’s in handling things.
Unknown
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

Wake up every morning expecting blessings from God and you will not be able to count them by the end of the day.
Unknown
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

Everyone is a self-made person, but only the successful admit it.
Unknown
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

Fiery trials burn off the dross of our lives so that we can look at the gold more purely.
Unknown
• I remember reading this in a magazine article but remember no details about it except that I think it was written by Gary Paulsen

Compassion is the seed that grows into the giving tree of selfless service.
Unknown
• I read or heard this quote somewhere, somewhen, but now I can find no evidence of its existence

God give me the strength to withstand the rigors of my answered prayers.
Unknown
• I read or heard this quote somewhere, somewhen, but now I can find no evidence of its existence

I believe in the sun—even when it does not shine;
I believe in love—even when it is not shown;
I believe in God—even when he does not speak.
Unknown Holocaust victim
Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned About Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients by Bernie S. Siegel, HarperCollins, May 4, 1990, Google eBook, page 177

I asked God for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for; but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered;
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
The Prayer of an Unknown Confederate Soldier
Evangelism Handbook: Biblical, Spiritual, Intentional, Missional by Alvin Reid, B&H Publishing Group, October 1, 2009, page 175
• This quote can be found in hundreds of books, virtually all of which offer slight variations in wording and punctuation

The creature finally turns to his Creator, if for no other reason than to ask in anguish: ‘Why, Lord, why?’ By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into the Infinite Presence, whose beauty alone should lure him.
Unknown Indian saint
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “A ‘Perfume Saint’ Displays His Wonders,” page 39

Abandon yourself into the arms of love.
Unknown saint
• Quoted by Brother Anandamoy of Self-Realization Fellowship in the CD, Opening to God’s Love in Meditation, which was included in the Winter 2006 issue of Self-Realization magazine.

The world is filled with hungry souls who famish in the very presence of the bread of life; men die searching for the very God who lives within them. Men seek for the treasures of the kingdom with yearning hearts and weary feet when they are all within the immediate grasp of living faith.
The Urantia Book 159:3.8
TruthBook website

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov
Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 1958

Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.
Theodore Newton Vail
Men Who Are Making America by Bertie Charles Forbes, Forbes Publishing Co., 1922, page 378

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
Hamster to Harmony. Get Off the “Wheel” and Live Your Best Life! by Maurice DeCastro, Ecademy Press, February 28, 2009, page 33

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
Abigail Van Buren
Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, Simon and Schuster, May 4, 1993, August 15 entry

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced.
Johannes Jacobus van der Leeuw
The Conquest of Illusion, originally published in 1928; Kessinger Publishing, May 20, 2003, page 11

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
Henry van Dyke
The Actor’s Menu: A Character Preparation Handbook by Bill Howey, Compass Publishing, September 28, 2005, page 69

What you possess in the world will be found at the day of your death to belong to someone else; but what you are will be yours forever.
Henry van Dyke
Pennsylvania School Journal, Volume 90, Issue 2, Pennsylvania State Education Association, 1941, page 42

The best way to know God is to love many things.
Vincent van Gogh
Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, edited by Mark Roskill, Simon and Schuster, March 1, 1997, page 124

If you hear a voice within you saying, “You are not a painter,” then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent by Himself: A Selection of His Paintings and Drawings Together with Extracts from His Letters, edited by Bruce Bernard, Chartwell Books, 2001, page 56
• Letter dated October 28, 1883, from Vincent van Gogh to his younger brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh

When we judge, we are pushing people away; we are creating a wall, a barrier. When we forgive we are destroying barriers; we come closer to others.
Jean Vanier
Community and Growth, translated by Ann Shearer, Paulist Press, 1989, page 36

Did we but know how much God loves us, we should die of joy.
Saint John Vianney
Life of the cure d’Ars by Alfred Monnin, 1862, Google eBook, page 247
• This is a popular translation of Vianney’s quote

Your thoughts bring your experiences, just like a waiter obediently bringing your order to you. The waiter doesn’t argue with you when you order something unhealthy from the menu. He merely nods and brings it to you.
Doreen Virtue
Manifesting with the Angels, an online essay

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott
How to Live with Another Person, Pocket Books, 1982, page 25

The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of the Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Advaita Ashram, 1915, Google eBook, page 52
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote was orignally published in “Karma in Its Effect on Character,” the first chapter of Vivekananda’s 1896 book, Karma Yoga. This book, edited in part by Sarah Waldo, was derived from a series of lectures Vivekananda gave that were recorded by the stenographer and disciple J.J. Goodwin.

Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfill your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of the Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Advaita Ashram, 1915, Google eBook, page 58
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote was orignally published in “Each Is Great in Its Own Place,” the ssecond chapter of Vivekananda’s 1896 book, Karma Yoga. This book, edited in part by Sarah Waldo, one of Vivekananda’s foremost disciples in America, was derived from a series of lectures Vivekananda gave that were recorded by the stenographer and disciple J.J. Goodwin.

When we come to that non-attachment, then we can understand the marvellous mystery of the universe; how it is intense activity and vibration, and at the same time intensest peace and calm; how it is work every moment and rest every moment. That is the mystery of the universe—the impersonal and personal in one, the infinite and finite in one. Then we shall find the secret.
Swami Vivekananda
From a lecture, entitled “Krishna,” delivered in California on April 1, 1900
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Advaita Ashrama, 1973, page 442

The very thing I call pleasurable today, tomorrow under better circumstances I may call pain. The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 2, Advaita Ashrama, 1989, page 168
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote is from a lecture delivered in London on October 29, 1896

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 2, Advaita Ashrama, 1976, page 295

Come out into the broad open light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts? Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 2, Advaita Ashrama, 1989, page 323
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote was from a lecture delivered in London on November 12, 1896

Truth stands on its own evidences; it does not require any other testimony to attest it; it is self-effulgent. It penetrates into the inmost recesses of our nature, and the whole universe stands up and says, “This is Truth.”
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 4, Advaita Ashrama, 1970, page 24
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote was from a lecture on Bhakti Yoga entitled “The Teacher of Spirituality.” It was published in the 1896 book, Addresses on the Vedanta Philosophy by the Hindu Yogi Swami Vivekananda, Volume 2: Bhakti Yoga or Relation of the Divine Through Love. This book was arranged to be published by E.T. Sturdy and is basically an unedited version of Vivekananda’s lectures. What Vivekananda actually said, as recorded by J. J. Goodwin, was:

Truth stands on its own evidences; it does not require any other testimony to attest it; it is self-effulgent. It penetrates into the inmost corners of our nature, and the whole universe of nature stands up and says “This is truth.”

Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 4, Advaita Ashrama, 1999, page 351

Herein lies the whole secret of Existence. Waves may roll over the surface and tempest rage, but deep down there is the stratum of infinite calmness, infinite peace, and infinite bliss.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 4, Advaita Ashrama, 1999, page 354

Live in the midst of the battle of life. Anyone can keep calm in a cave or when asleep. Stand in the whirl and madness of action and reach the Centre. If you have found the Centre, you cannot be moved.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 6, Advaita Ashrama, 1989, page 84

Give as the rose gives perfume, because it is its own nature, utterly unconscious of giving.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 7, Advaita Ashrama, 1970, page 86
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote was from a lecture delivered on August 1, 1895. It was recorded by Sarah Waldo, one of Vivekananda’s foremost disciples in America, and included in the book, Inspired Talks.

When I am bound by nature, by name and form, by time, space, and causality, I do not know what I truly am. But even in this bondage my real Self is not completely lost. I strain against the bonds; one by one they break, and I become conscious of my innate grandeur.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 8, Advaita Ashrama, page 249

This I have seen in life—he who is overcautious about himself falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honour and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss always loses.
Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 8, Advaita Ashrama, page 433
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote was from a letter, dated October 11, 1897, that was written in Bengali, and sent from Murree, India, to Swami Brahmananda

There is a time for expanding and a time for contraction; one provokes the other and the other calls for the return of the first. . . . Never are we nearer the Light than when the darkness is deepest.
Swami Vivekananda
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 554
• According to Frank Parlato, Jr. of vivekananda.net, this quote can be found in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. I have not yet been able to locate it there.

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
Voltaire
More Random Walks in Science: An Anthology by Robert L. Weber, CRC Press, January 1, 1982, page 65

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Voltaire
Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design by Laurence G. Boldt, Penguin, August 25, 2009, Google eBook

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
Voltaire
Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin Murray Ballou, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1899, Google eBook, page 276

My narrative:
Heidi von Beltz, a former championship skier and aspiring actor, was paralyzed from her earlobes down in a two-vehicle head-on collision while working as a stunt double in The Cannonball Run in 1980. Unbowed by her doctors’ prognosis that she had perhaps five years to live, von Beltz routinely endured a grueling regimen of physical therapy and muscle stimulation for up to ten hours a day. Nine years later, she was able to sit up on her own. Six years after that, outfitted with lightweight aluminum leg braces, she taught herself to stand.
and
Sixteen years after the crash, while promoting her memoir, My Soul Purpose, von Beltz, who had devoured countless books on philosophy and spirituality, said she considered herself lucky and wouldn’t have wanted to miss the experience of her paralysis for anything. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” she said. ‘‘I was always so active that I would never have sat down long enough to learn what I’ve learned. I can’t imagine going through this life and not knowing what I know now. I just had to break my neck to do it.’’
Entertainment Weekly magazine, April 12, 1996, “Soul Survivor” by Dana Kennedy

If perchance you see no reason for giving thanks, rest assured the fault is in yourself.
Wabasha
The Gospel of the Red Man: An Indian Bible, compiled by Ernest Thompson Seton, page 63
• According to Seton, this quote is part of a morning prayer chanted by the Osages
• This quote has also been attributed to Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Wovoka

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
Denis Waitley
Seeds of Greatness: The Ten Best-Kept Secrets of Total Success, Simon & Schuster, July 1, 1988, page 248

“Having” is kindergarten stuff. “Being” is graduate school. “Having” is what children want. “Being” is what students of mastery seek.
Neale Donald Walsch
“From HAVING to BEING,” an article in the Conversations with GodWeekly Bulletin #311, October 3, 2008

We do not and cannot know the agenda of each individual soul—but we can know that the agenda of each individual soul serves the agenda of every other soul.
Neale Donald Walsch
Alan’s Site, a blog by Neale Donald Walsch, post entitled, “Dealing with Evil,” October 3, 2008
• Walsch also expressed the same sentiment in Home With God: In a Life That Never Ends, Simon and Schuster, March 21, 2006, Google eBook, page 181:

Do not presume that you can know, or can surmise from the “facts,” what is the path of the soul. You cannot know of the delicate interweavings co-created by all of the Blessed Beings involved in the life experience just related. Billy came here to serve ALL agendas.

My narrative:
That is why Neale Donald Walsch wrote in Conversations with God, Book 1 that “fate” can be viewed as an acronym for “From All Thoughts Everywhere.”
Conversations with God, Book 1, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, October 29, 1996, page 106
• Confirmed and approved by Walsch via e-mail that this was his original concept

The purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.
Neale Donald Walsch
Conversations with God, Book 1, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, October 29, 1996, page 123

Success is not a doorway, it’s a stairway.
Dottie Walters
Secrets of Successful Speakers: How You Can Motivate, Captivate, and Persuade by Lilly Walters, McGraw-Hill, 1993, page 188
• Lilly Walters is Dottie Walters’ daughter

The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.
Izaak Walton
Professionalism in Health Care: A Primer for Career Success by Sherry Makely, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009, page 25

To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.
William H. Walton
Healing for a Bitter Heart: Releasing the Power of Forgiveness by Charles R. Gerber, College Press, April 1, 1999, page 74

Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.
William Arthur Ward
You Can If You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale, Simon and Schuster, August 26, 1987, page 79

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Charles Dudley Warner
Backlog Studies, “Fifth Study,” Houghton Mifflin Co., 1890, Google eBook, page 108
• This quote is commonly attributed to Emerson

Have you grown to the point where you can unflinchingly stand up for the right, for that which is honorable, honest, truthful, whether it makes you popular or unpopular? Have you grown to the point where absolutely and unreservedly you make truth and honor your standard of thinking and speaking?
Booker T. Washington
Black-Belt Diamonds: Gems from the Speeches, Addresses, and Talks to Students of Booker T. Washington, selected and arranged by Victoria Earle Matthews, Fortune and Scott, 1898, Google eBook, page 41

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
Dale Wasserman
Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion, and Mitch Leigh, Random House Digital, 1966, Google eBook

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Rev. John Watson
The Bookman, Volume 25, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1907, Google eBook, page 457
• This quote is a modern paraphrasing of what Watson (aka Ian Maclaren) wrote in 1897:
Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard fight.
• According to Wikipedia:

It is thought that Maclaren was the original source of the quote “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,” now widely misattributed to Plato or Philo of Alexandria. The oldest known reference to the quote may be found in the 1898 Christmas edition of The British Weekly in 1898 as “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.”

Life must be played by ear—which is only to say that we must trust, not symbolic rules and linear principles, but our brains or natures. Yet this must bring one back to the faith that nature makes no mistake. In such a universe a decision which results in one’s own death is not a mistake: it is simply a way of dying at the right moment.
Alan Watts
In My Own Way, New World Library, second edition, May 2, 2007, pages 306-307

Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
Alan Watts
Keys to the Open Gate: A Woman’s Spirituality Sourcebook by Kimberley Snow, Conari Press, June 1, 1994, page 217

Courage is being scared to death . . . and saddling up anyway.
John Wayne
Hollywood Drive: What It Takes To Break In, Hang In & Make It In The by Entertainment Industry by Eve Light Honthaner, Elsevier, May 2, 2005, page 325

An invariable result of genuine spiritual development . . . As regards people, it is quite possible to love them more and at the same time to like them less.
Gale D. Webbe
The Night and Nothing, Harper & Row, 1964, page 60

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
Simone Weil
Gravity and Grace, University of Nebraska Press, January 1, 1997, page 67

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
Simone Weil
Gravity and Grace, University of Nebraska Press, January 1, 1997, page 200

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Simone Weil
Selected Essays, 1934-1943, Oxford University Press, 1962, page 26

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he was sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.
H. G. Wells
Apropos of Delores, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1938, page 57

Just keep asking, “Dear God, if I can’t have what I want, then help me to know what it is you want me to have. Help me to receive whatever it is that You are trying to give me.” Know in your heart, that somewhere inside you there is a treasure much greater than the one you have been asking for.
John E. Welshons
When Prayers Aren’t Answered, New World Library, September 28, 2007, page 230

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
John Wesley
Letters of John Wesley, edited by George Eayrs, Hodder and Stoughton, 1915, Google eBook, page 423

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
Charles C. West
Spiritual Divorce: Divorce As a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life by Debbie Ford, HarperCollins, October 24, 2006, Google eBook, page 41

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.
Jessamyn West
The Quaker Reader, Viking Press, 1962, page 25

If you want to stand out, don’t be different, be outstanding.
Meredith West
Little Men on the Radio by Sophia E. Schessler, Dorrance Publishing, September 30, 2009, Google eBook, page 109

Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.
West Point cadet prayer
• From the official website of the United States Military Academy at West Point

Our way is not soft grass, it’s a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upwards, forward, toward the sun.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer
Why Men Fall Out of Love: The Secrets They Don’t Tell by Michael French, Wellness Institute/Self-Help Books, LLC, June 30, 2005, page 286

Life is the only real counsellor . . . wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues.
Edith Wharton
Sanctuary, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903, Google eBook, page 123

Life is always either a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
Edith Wharton
A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995, page 332
• From a March, 1926 diary entry

One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
J. Gustav White
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

Flowers do not force their way with great strife. Flowers open to perfection slowly in the sun. . . . Don’t be in a hurry about spiritual matters. Go step by step, and be very sure.
White Eagle
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 357

Spiritual growth results from absorbing and digesting truth and putting it to practice in daily life.
White Eagle
Deliverance To A Fresh Spirit: 12-step Guide For Ending Toxic Relationships and Overcoming Their Effects by Conte Morgan Terrell, AuthorHouse, June 1, 2004, Google eBook, page 2

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Walt Whitman
Poem: “Song of Myself”
Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Volume I: 1855-1856, edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White, NYU Press, February 1, 2008, page 1

I know I am deathless . . .
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.
Walt Whitman
Poem: “Song of Myself”
Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Volume I: 1855-1856, edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White, NYU Press, February 1, 2008, page 26

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God . . .
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.
Walt Whitman
Poem: “Song of Myself
Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Volume I: 1855-1856, edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White, NYU Press, February 1, 2008, page 79

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
Walt Whitman
Poem: “Miracles”
Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Volume I: 1855-1856, edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White, NYU Press, February 1, 2008, page 256

The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail.
Walt Whitman
Poem: “A Song of the Rolling Earth”
Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, Volume I: 1855-1856, edited by Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett, Arthur Golden, and William White, NYU Press, February 1, 2008, page 270

Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturned love;
But now I think there is no unreturned love—the pay is certain, one way or another;
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not returned;
Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass, 1867 edition, page 142
• One of the Calamus poems, a sequence of up to forty-five untitled, numbered poems

Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.
Dennis Wholey
Heart of Happiness: A Spiritual Map to a Joyful Life by Tom Fortson, Virtualbookworm Publishing, August 30, 2005, page 32

The possibilities are unlimited as long as you are true to your life’s purpose.
Marcia Wieder
Making Your Dreams Come True, Harmony Books, December 1, 1999, page 195

My Lord, why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? . . . O Lead me to the beyond within.
Sister Macrina Wiederkehr
Poem: “A Prayer for Growing Up”
Seasons of Your Heart: Prayers and Reflections, HarperOne, August 30, 1991, pages 110-111

All that we do
Is touched with ocean, yet we remain
On the shore of what we know.
Richard Wilbur
Poem: “For Dudley”
New and Collected Poems, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 18, 1989, page 135

With every deed you are sowing a seed,
Though the harvest you may not see.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Poem: “You Never Can Tell”
Custer, and Other Poems, W. B. Conkey Company, 1896, page 72

I hold it true that thoughts are things
Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Poem: “Secret Thoughts”
Poems of Pleasure, Belford, Clarke & Company, 1888, Google eBook, page 65

All love that has not friendship for its base,
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Poem: “Upon the Sand”
Poems of Passion, W. B. Conkey Company, 1883, page 24

Say you are well, or all is well with you,
And God shall hear your words and make them true.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Poem: Speech
Poems of Power, W.B. Conkey Company, 1903, page 16

Who, being loved, is poor?
Oscar Wilde
A Woman of No Importance, John W. Luce & Company, 1906, Google eBook, Act IV, dialogue spoken by Hester, page 86

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
Lady Windermere’s Fan, L. Smithers, 1903, Google eBook, dialogue spoken by Dumby, page 94

To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Oscar Wilde
The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde, Courier Dover Publications, June 1, 1959, Google eBook, page 22

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasure.
Thornton Wilder
Our Town, Harper, 1960, page 82

The walls that we build around ourselves both mentally and physically give us the dangerous false illusion that we are safe, but there’s no such thing as a wall that cannot be torn down. When we invest ourselves in the idea that we have erected this wall for protection, we naturally make enemies of anything on the other side of the wall.
Angel Kyodo Williams
Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace, Penguin, January 1, 2002, page 178

The path that you follow is not about going somewhere, but about coming back to you. Over and over again. Only this time, you are awake to who that is and the life that you are living.
Angel Kyodo Williams
Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace, Penguin, January 1, 2002, page 180

Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. In those transparent moments we know other people’s joys and sorrows and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.
Fritz Williams
Innovations in Cancer and Palliative Care Education by Lorna Foyle, Radcliffe Publishing, July 1, 2007, page 125

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here.
Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, HarperCollins, March 15, 1996, Google eBook, page xxii

The most enlightened prayer isn’t “Dear God, send me someone wonderful,” but, “Dear God, help me realize that I am someone wonderful.”
Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, HarperCollins, March 15, 1996, Google eBook, page 125

We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.
Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, HarperCollins, March 15, 1996, Google eBook, page 175

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, HarperCollins, March 15, 1996, Google eBook, pages 190-191
• This quote is often misattributed to Nelson Mandela. Click here for the full story.

As we look not back nor forward, but deep within, we see a light that is greater than the darkness of the world.
Marianne Williamson
The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife, Hay House, Inc., first edition, January 1, 2008, page 181

Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one who inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.
Marianne Williamson
Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage, Random House Digital, Inc., November 15, 1994, page 131

God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws.
Marianne Williamson
• Although this quote is listed on many websites, I have not been able to source it directly to Williamson’s own writings. The closest passages I could find are in her book, The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life, HarperCollins, November 9, 2004, Google eBook, page 46:

If you do not choose to deal with the personal issues that keep you from expressing yourself at your highest, then you are choosing to block your own way. God Himself will bow before that choice, because the gift of Free Will was given to you at your creation. . . . God himself will not intervene between Cause and Effect, as the law was set up for our protection.

If I could only remember that the days were not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart, the fires which keep the poet alive as the citizen never lives, but which burn all the roofs of security!
Edmund Wilson
Galahad And I Thought Of Daisy, Macmillan, January 31, 1963, page 111

You can either have your excuses or you can have your dreams. You can’t have both.
Barbara J. Winter
WInter’s blog, Joyfully Jobless, August 26, 2010 post

Our acts of courage beget courage in others. We never know who’s watching.
Barbara J. Winter
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

You cannot outperform your self-image.
Barbara J. Winter
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

[God is] that Supreme Intelligence which governs everything.
Ancient wisdom
Ancient Metaphysics, Volume 6, J. Balfour and Co., 1799, Google eBook, page 23

All that is, is holy.
Ancient wisdom
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle, ReadHowYouWant.com, April 21, 2010, page 151

My narrative:
Great masters throughout the ages have taught: That which is real is that which never changes.
Cistercian Studies, Volume 9, Cistercian Publications, 1974, page 106
Ancient wisdom 

So you can walk on water? You are no better than a twig floating on a puddle. You can fly through the air? You are no better than this gnat buzzing around my head. Master your own heart then maybe you can be somebody.
Arabic wisdom
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way—it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven.
Hasidic wisdom
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 348

In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.
Hindu wisdom
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “Years in My Master’s Hermitage,” page 102

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.
Hindu wisdom
Character Lessons in American Biography for Public Schools and Home Instruction by James Terry White, The Character Development League, 1909, Google eBook, page 63

Now is a rushing river. There are those who would hug the shore, but there is no shore. Push off into the stream. Hold your head above the fray. See who else is in the midst of things, and celebrate.
Native American wisdom
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

Now and then I go about pitying myself and all the while my soul is being blown by great winds across the sky.
Ojibway wisdom
Wisdom of the Ages: 60 Days to Enlightenment by Wayne W. Dyer, HarperCollins, April 30, 2002, page 225

Every person has light within that responds to the light in others.
Quaker wisdom
Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation, Crossing Press, 1987, page 81

When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.
Sufi wisdom
What it All Means: Recognizing the Divine Self Within by Salah, Balboa Press, November 4, 2011, page 32

If you don’t have a temple in your heart, you’ll never find your heart in a temple.
Sufi wisdom
A Promise Is a Promise by Wayne W. Dyer, Hay House, Inc., August 1, 2001, Google eBook

Abundance can be had simply by consciously receiving what already has been given.
Sufi wisdom
The Architecture of All Abundance: Seven Foundations to Prosperity by Lenedra J. Carrol, New World Library, February 4, 2003, Google eBook

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by David Francis Pears and Brian McGuinness, Psychology Press, June 26, 2001, no. 6:4311, page 87

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Culture and Value, translated by Peter Winch, University of Chicago Press, 1984, page 42

You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
John Wooden

They Call Me Coach by John Wooden with Jack Tobin, Contemporary Books, September 1, 1988, page 62

On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little nameless unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
William Wordsworth
Williams Wordsworth: The Pedlar, Tintern Abbey, the Two-Part Prelude (Poems), Cambridge University Press, January 31, 1985, page 34

One instant is eternity; eternity is in the now. When you see through this one instant, you see through the one who sees.
Wu Men Hui-k’ai
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 572

That is Fullness, this is Fullness;
from Fullness comes Fullness.
When Fullness is taken from Fullness,
Fullness remains.
Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.1
What is Hinduism?: Modern Adventures Into a Profound Global Faith by Editors of Hinduism Today, Himalayan Academy Publications, April 15, 2007, page 89

I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will make sense only in reverse.
Philip Yancey
Finding God in Unexpected Places, WaterBrook Press, August 19, 2008, page 212

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
Yasutani Hakuun
The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics by Robert Aitken, Macmillan, November 1, 1984, page 169

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.
William Butler Yeats
Memoirs of W. B. Yeats, edited by Denis Donoghue, Macmillan, 1972, pages 195-196

When love comes it comes without effort, like perfect weather.
Helen Yglesias
All for Love by Helen Stoddart, Chronicle Books, December 20, 2007, page 6
• Stoddart attributes the quote to Yglesias’ book, Family Feeling. I have not yet been able to locate it there.

Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the fires of divine wisdom.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “Outwitting the Stars,” page 146

In the course of natural righteousness, each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. Whatever universal energies he himself, wisely or unwisely, has set in motion must return to him as their starting point, like a circle inexorably completing itself.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “Kashi, Reborn and Discovered,“ page 227

It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “The Years 1940-51,” page 417

A child of God “bears witness” by his life. He embodies truth; if he expound it also, that is generous redundancy.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “The Years 1940-51,” page 419

Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy, no intellectual insight. Truth is exact correspondence with reality. For man, truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature, his Self as soul.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “The Years 1940-51,” page 419

My narrative:
Yogananda’s method is powerful because the potency of an affirmation lies not in the words themselves but in your relationship to them. Invest your emotional energy in each word. Inhabit each affirmation and let it inhabit you. Feel it resonate within you until it takes root, repeating it until, as Yogananda wrote, “you finally realize the meaning of your utterance in every fiber of your being.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Cosmic Chants by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1974; softcover edition 2011, Introduction, page xviii

The test of whether your life is lived for God alone is that you do not grieve over any frustrated personal desire, but only when you have displeased God.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Divine Romance by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2002, “The Yoga Ideal of Renunciation Is for All,” page 238

My narrative:
As Paramahansa Yogananda wrote, when you can “stand unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds,” then nothing can touch you where you live, and nothing of value can be taken from you.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Divine Romance by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2002, “The Yoga Ideal of Renunciation Is for All,” page 239, as follows:
The successful yogi can stand unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds.

The wave cannot say, “I am the ocean,” because the ocean can exist without the wave. But the ocean can say, “I am the wave,” because the wave cannot exist without the ocean.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Divine Romance by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2002, “How You Can Approach God,” page 367

I found God more tempting than temptation.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Convocation banquet speech, January 3, 1937
The Divine Romance by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2002, “I Am Blessed to Behold Him,” page 407

If you follow the way of meditation that we teach, you shall find that one day, when you are least expecting it, God will drop both His hands to lift you up. It is not only that you are seeking God, but that God is seeking you—more than you are seeking Him.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Convocation banquet speech, January 3, 1937
The Divine Romance by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2002, “I Am Blessed to Behold Him,” page 408

So love God inwardly that nothing will ever be able to touch you outwardly.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Finding the Joy Within You by Sri Daya Mata, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1990; hardcover edition 2008, “The Guru: Guide to Spiritual Freedom,” page 254

If I were to display the powers God has given me, I could draw thousands. But the path to God is not a circus. I gave the powers back to God, and I never use them unless He tells me to. My mission is to awaken love for God in the soul of man. I prefer a soul to a crowd, and I love crowds of souls.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Finding the Joy Within You by Sri Daya Mata, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1990; hardcover edition 2008, “Paramahansa Yogananda—As I Knew Him,” page 259

Be so drunk with the love of God that you will know nothing but God; and give that love to all.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Finding the Joy Within You by Sri Daya Mata, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1990; hardcover edition 2008, “Paramahansa Yogananda—As I Knew Him,” page 262

Just as a person can watch through a screen a crowd of people in front of him, without himself being seen by them, so the soul through the screen of intuition watches all its thoughts.
Paramahansa Yogananda
God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995; hardcover edition 2005, Chapter 2, “Sankhya and Yoga: Cosmic Wisdom and the Method of its Attainment,” Verse 25, page 225

Meditation teaches you how to be, in Yogananda’s words, “calmly active and actively calm.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995; hardcover edition 2005, Chapter 3, “Karma Yoga: The Path of Spiritual Action,” Verse 5, page 341, as follows:
The calm yogi can whirl his body and mind into intense action without being identified with them, and can then instantly return to his inner action-free state of meditative communion with Spirit. He is ever calmly active and actively calm.

Good and evil must ever be complements on this earth. Everything created must bear some guise of imperfection. How else could God, the Sole Perfection, fragment His one consciousness into forms of creation distinguishable from Himself? There can be no images of light without contrasting shadows. Unless evil had been created, man would not know the opposite, good. Night brings out the bright contrast of day; sorrow teaches us the desirability of joy.
Paramahansa Yogananda
God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995; hardcover edition 2005, Chapter 5, “Freedom Through Inner Renunciation,” Verse 15, pages 552-553

Lord, I will reason, I will will, I will act; but guide Thou my reason, will, and activity to the right thing I should do.
Paramahansa Yogananda
God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995; hardcover edition 2005, Chapter 6, “Permanent Shelter in Spirit Through Yoga Meditation,” Verse 1, page 588

In your silence God’s silence ceases.
Paramahansa Yogananda
In the Sanctuary of the Soul by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1998; hardcover edition 2010, page 45

Possession of material riches without inner peace is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Journey to Self-Realization by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1997; hardcover edition 2000, “Business, Balance, and Inner Peace: Restoring Equilibrium to the Work Week,” pages 75-76

True freedom lies in doing what you should do when you ought to do it.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Journey to Self-Realization by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1997; hardcover edition 2000, “The Wisdom Way to Overcome Karma,” page 234

Think of every trial as a pickax with which to dig into the soil of your consciousness and release the fountain of spiritual strength that lies within.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Journey to Self-Realization by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1997; hardcover edition 2000, “Increasing Your Magnetism,” page 250

As moving pictures are sustained by a beam of light coming from the projection booth of a movie house, so are all of us sustained by the Cosmic Beam, the Divine Light pouring from the projection booth of Eternity.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Man’s Eternal Quest by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975; hardcover edition 2001, “Healing by God’s Unlimited Power,” page 90

Only spiritual consciousness—realization of God’s presence in oneself and in every other living being—can save the world. I see no chance for peace without it. Begin with yourself. There is no time to waste. It is your duty to do your part to bring God’s kingdom on earth.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Man’s Eternal Quest by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975; hardcover edition 2001, “Self-realization: Criterion of Religion,” page 110

You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Man’s Eternal Quest by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975; hardcover edition 2001, “Increasing the Power of Initiative,” page 357

Let my soul smile through my heart and let my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter Thy rich smiles in sad hearts.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Metaphysical Meditations by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1964; hardcover edition 1998, “Spreading Divine Joy,” pages 88-89

Human friendship is the echo of God’s friendship.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Metaphysical Meditations by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1964; hardcover edition 1998, “Friendship and Service,” page 97

Stillness is the altar of Spirit.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Rajarsi Janakananda: A Great Western Yogi, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1996; softcover edition 2009, page 96

Truth is never afraid of questions.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; hardcover edition 1994, page 5

Have only one desire: to know God. Satisfying the sensory desires cannot satisfy you, because you are not the senses. They are only your servants, not your Self.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; hardcover edition 1994, page 61

If you doubt, you won’t see; and if you see, you won’t doubt.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; hardcover edition 1994, page 64

No matter which way you turn a compass, its needle points to the north. So it is with the true yogi. Immersed he may be in many outer activities, but his mind is always on the Lord.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; hardcover edition 1994, page 87

If you don’t discover the pearl by one or two divings, don’t blame the ocean; find fault with your diving. You haven’t yet plunged deep enough.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; hardcover edition 1994, page 89

When a visitor told Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi, that it hardly seemed practical to think about God all the time, Yogananda replied, “The world agrees with you, and is the world a happy place?”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; hardcover edition 1994, page 99

Sooner or later, a time arises in every person’s life when a connection with that Higher Power suddenly becomes of utmost urgency, bringing him to his knees through painful desperation or worshipful devotion—the choice is his.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Second Coming of Christ by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 2004; hardcover edition 2007, Discourse 34, “Jesus Cites His Wondrous Works in Testimony to John the Baptist and Extols John’s Greatness,” page 621

Though God is the Creator and Sustainer of man, He has ordained the law of cause and effect, or karma, to govern life so that man himself is the judge of his own actions.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Second Coming of Christ by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 2004; hardcover edition 2007, Discourse 35, “The Forgiveness of Sins,” page 646

No matter where you go, your wandering footsteps will lead you back to God.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Songs of the Soul by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1983; hardcover edition 2006, “My Soul Is Marching On,” page 5

Seek to do brave and lovely things which are left undone by the majority of people. Give gifts of love and peace to those whom others pass by.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Spiritual Diary, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982; softcover edition 2007, April 8 entry

By meditation we connect the little joy of the soul with the vast joy of the Spirit.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Spiritual Diary, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982; softcover edition 2007, August 20 entry

The faraway sun, seemingly small in the sky, radiates beyond its sphere to give us light and warmth. The stars share with us the joy of their jewel-like luster. All of God’s expressions in nature send out a vibration that in some way serves the world. You are His highest creation; what are you doing to reach out beyond yourself?
Paramahansa Yogananda
To Be Victorious in Life by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 2002; softcover edition 2010, “Expanding Your Consciousness for All-Round Success,” pages 7-8

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Law of Success by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1980; softcover edition 2012, “Failures Should Arouse Determination,” page 13

O Father, when I was blind I found not a door that led to Thee. Thou hast healed my eyes; now I discover doors everywhere; the hearts of flowers, the voices of friendship, memories of lovely experiences.

The vast ocean of truth can be measured only according to the capacity of one’s own cup of intelligence and perception.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Whispers from Eternity—First Version, 1929; hardcover edition 2005, page 5

Each gust of my prayer opens a new entrance to the vast temple of Thy presence.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Whispers from Eternity by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2011, “Doors Everywhere,” page 219

A smooth life is not a victorious life.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Spring 2002, “The Help and Blessings of an Ever-Living Guru,” Letter to Ananda Mata, page 8

If you pray to God as though your heart and mind will burst with longing, He will respond.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Winter 2002, quoted by Sri Daya Mata in “Mastering the Life-changing Power of Prayer,” page 31

The sun shines, but if I close my eyes I see only darkness. When I open my eyes, the sunlight is there. It was always there; the darkness existed merely because I had my eyes closed. That is the way it is with the light of God’s presence. Your eyes are closed; but if you open your spiritual eye by meditation, you will behold Him shining within you and everywhere.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Fall 2005, “Living the Divine Existence God Planned for You,” pages 17-18

You have a claim on God as valid as that of the greatest saint.
Paramahansa Yogananda
A talk at Self-Realization Fellowship Temple, Encinitas, California
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Spring 2006, “Destroying the Consciousness of Fear,” page 15

You are a wildflower, a beauty unsurpassed. In each soul is the unique imprint of the grace of God.
Paramahansa Yogananda
A Thursday evening talk at Self-Realization Fellowship Temple, Encinitas, California
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Summer 2007, “Divine Devotion: The Love for God That Sets You Free,” page 9

Thought is fire; use its concentrated power to consume all obstacles to achievement.
Paramahansa Yogananda
A Thursday evening inspirational service at Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters in Los Angeles, California
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Spring 2008, “How to Succeed in Finding God,” page 9

All that separates us from others, as Indian yogi Paramahansa Yogananda noted, are “partitions of ego consciousness.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Winter 2010, quoted by Sri Daya Mata in back-page letter as follows:
Friendship is God’s trumpet call, bidding the soul destroy the partitions of ego consciousness that separate it from all other souls and from Him.

We have no sense that can reveal knowledge of Him; the senses give knowledge only of His manifestations. No thought or inference can enable us to know Him as He truly is, for thought cannot go beyond the data of the senses; it can only arrange and interpret the impressions of the senses.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Self-Realization magazine, Self-Realization Fellowship, Fall 2011, “Beyond Thought and Intellect: The Unlimited Insight of Soul Intuition,” page 17

Paramahansa Yogananda urged his devotees to look dispassionately at the drama of their lives “from the balcony of introspection.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
In Sri Daya Mata’s back-page letter in the Summer 2001 issue of Self-Realization magazine, she wrote: “Gurudeva Paramahansa Yogananda taught that if we would control our destiny, we must take time to look dispassionately at this drama from the balcony of introspection. Then we discover, hidden in even difficult or enigmatic scenes, the guidance of our loving Father-Mother-God that can lift us to new levels of understanding.”
Yogananda’s use of the phrase “balcony of introspection” also appears in:
• Journey to Self-Realization by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1997; hardcover edition 2000, “Why God Created the World,” page 48; and
• Whispers from Eternity by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1986; hardcover edition 2011, “We Are Actors in Thy Cosmic Pictures,” page 119

Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world. Every individual must change his own life if he wants to live in a peaceful world. The world cannot become peaceful unless and until you yourself begin to work toward peace.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Para-Grams, Self-Realization Fellowship

Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire.
Swami Sri Yukteswar
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “Years in My Master’s Hermitage,” page 93

If you have within you that faith which is truly divine, and if there is something you desire that is not in the universe, it shall be created for you.
Swami Sri Yukteswar
Man’s Eternal Quest by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975; hardcover edition 2001, “Increasing the Power of Initiative,” page 355

One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures;
One Reality, all comprehensive, contains within itself all realities;
The one moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water,
And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one moon.
Yung-chia Ta-shih
Prose-poem: “Song of Enlightenment”
Manual of Zen Buddhism by Daisetz Teitarō Suzuki, Forgotten Books, 1935, page 92
• Yung-chia was also known as Yoka Daishi

Getting rid of things and clinging to emptiness
Is an illness of the same kind;
It is just like throwing oneself into a fire
To avoid being drowned.
Yung-chia Ta-shih
Zen and Zen Classics, Volume 1 by Reginald Horace Blyth, Hokuseido Press, 1970, page 63

God speaks as softly as possible, and as loudly as necessary.
Rafi Zabor
Keepers of the Story: Oral Traditions in Religion by Megan McKenna, Church Publishing, Inc., January 1, 2005, page 109

If you circle your wagons to protect what you have, you can’t venture forward to what you desire.
Suzanne Zoglio
Recharge in Minutes: The Quick-Lift Way to Less Stress, More Success, and Renewed Energy, Tower Hill Press, August 2004, page 48
• The above book actually reads: “If you circle your wagons to protect what you have, you’ll travel in circles instead of moving forward.” However, a list of quotes from the book on Zoglio’s own websiteincludes the “venture forward to what you desire” version. I suspect she updated the quote for a later printing of the book; in any event, the “venture forward to what you desire” version is the most current.

Spiritual partners bond with an understanding that they are together because it is appropriate for their souls to grow together. They recognize that their growth may take them to the end of their days in this incarnation and beyond, or it may take them to six months. They cannot say that they will be together forever. The duration of their partnership is determined by how long it is appropriate for their evolution to be together. All of the vows that a human being can take cannot prevent the spiritual path from exploding through and breaking those vows if the spirit must move on.
Gary Zukav
The Seat of the Soul, Free Press, January 15, 1990, pages 125-126

When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what you were meant to be doing.
Gary Zukav
The Seat of the Soul, Free Press, January 15, 1990, page 236

In the world to come I shall not be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” I shall be asked, “Why were you not Zusya?”
Rabbi Zusya
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, Penguin, 1996, Google eBook