My chosen favorite quotations for December and mainly about enlightenment, ‘now’ and the importance of living in the now. They are not by Eckhart Tolle – but by an extraordinary variety of writers, even though Tolle is the outstanding teacher about now-ness. My thanks espcially to two of the very best sources of quotations online WisdomQuotes and the Quote Garden
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RUMI
1 Into my heart’s night / Along a narrow way / I groped; and lo! the light,……. – Rubaiyat of Rumi
ANON
2 Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. – Anon (?)
VIKTOR FRANKL
3 “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” — Victor Frankl
W.B. YEATS
4 “Man can embody the truth but he cannot know it.” – W.B. Yeats
MARK TWAIN
5 ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ Mark Twain
BUDDHA
6 “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” (Buddha)
SENECA
7 “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” (Seneca)
KEVIN KELLY
8 There is only One machine.
The web is its OS.
All screens look into the One.
No bits will live outside the web.
To share is to gain.
Let the One read it.
The One is us.
Kevin Kelly (see YouTube)
KAREN ARMSTRONG
9 “Like poetry, religion is an attempt to express the inexpressible.” – Karen Armstrong
M SCOTT PECK
10 Love = “The willingness to extend myself for the spiritual growth of myself or another”. (From “The Road Less Travelled”).
ANON and ECKHART TOLLE
11 The voice of God is silence
ANON and GHANDI
12 He/She/It has no religion.
ANAIS NIN:
13 The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
ANAIS NIN:
14 We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
ANNE FRANK:
15 How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ARTHUR MILLER:
16 The word now is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
BRENDA PETERSON:
17 The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:
18 Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
CORITA KENT:
19 Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:
20 Light tomorrow with today!
GWENDOLYN BROOKS:
21 Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
HENRY FORD:
22 History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
HUGH PRATHER:
23 To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
THICH NHAT HANH:
24 Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life..
JOANNA RUSS:
25 Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler’s bet: it’s an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now.
KALIDASA:
26 Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
MARGARET BONNANO:
27 It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.
MATTHEW ARNOLD:
28 Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done…
PEMA CHODRON:
29 Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
ROBERT FROST:
30 Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:
31 The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Soul Needs - One Garden 