c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The Happiest Man in The WorldThe French interpreter for the 14th Dalai Lama, former academic and dedicated meditator Matthieu Ricard, came into the spotlight in the field of neural science after being named “the happiest man in the world”. Naturally, there are many other men and women who demonstrate such equanimity, but the studies on his brain uncovered truly astonishing results. MRI scans showed that Matthieu Ricard and other serious long-term meditators (with more than 10,000 hours of practice each) were mentally, emotionally and spiritually fulfilled and displayed an abundance of positive emotions and equanimity in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain. When talking about his mindfulness training, Matthieu Ricard said with humility that: “Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time”.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
We cannot control the mind by trying to force it to be peaceful or positive. Many have attempted this using a plethora of methods throughout the ages, but it simply does not work. Trying to fight the human mind is like walking into a lion’s den empty-handed and believing that you have a realistic chance of defending yourself.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
Mindfulness (present-moment awareness) is deliberately focusing our attention on our thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations and mental activity without losing awareness of what is happening in the present moment. It is essentially being in a state of present-moment awareness and maintaining clarity without being swayed or distracted by mental commentary.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
The process of applying Mindfulness Burnout Prevention (MBP) in the workplace or any environment has a much more far-reaching effect than simply accessing equanimity throughout the vicissitudes of life. Continuous learning helps us to stay youthful, sharpen our mental faculties and wire new neural connections in our brain (making us better equipped to accomplish); it is also a sign of humility.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
Learning to practise mindfulness greatly enhances our ability to manifest emotional intelligence and equanimity under pressure and to display calmness, empathy and adaptability when communicating with others, whether it be with co-workers, clients or the board of directors. Learning to apply mindfulness on a daily basis will significantly encourage a positive, creative and enthusiastic attitude at all levels in companies large and small.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
The incredible benefits of practising and applying mindfulness and self-compassion in the workplace are being increasingly recognised by human resource professionals as well as the medical profession, as the stresses of competing in today’s global economy take their toll on the mental health and emotional wellbeing of many otherwise talented and enthusiastic individuals in the workplace.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
Whether someone is a CEO of a major corporation or is serving meals in a diner, failure to adopt a mindful approach will mean that mental and emotional exhaustion could become a habitual condition. Whether someone is stressed about their stocks losing value or being able to pay their bills, the internal underlying conditions of stress and pressure are essentially the same.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
When life throws difficulties at us and the mind is restless, emotional resilience will see us through challenging times. We can work through tempestuous emotions and self-doubt and come through them unharmed and avoid self-sabotage and self-harm.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
Many of us have been unconsciously programmed to treat walking as a means to an end, especially while in the workplace. Naturally, a lack of mindfulness while walking leaves one hostage to self-perpetuating stress and anxiety. We rush (often while shouting into a mobile phone), completely missing the enjoyment of walking. Walking and breathing, if practised harmoniously, can be peaceful and thoroughly enjoyable. Even walking down a corridor or into an office or wherever we are working or being of service can be a harmonious action.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Burnout Prevention: An 8-Week Course for Professionals
If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present... gratefully.
— Maya Angelou
Two monks were once travelling together down a wet and muddy road. The rain was torrential, making it almost impossible to walk along the path. As the two men were trudging along, a beautiful girl dressed in silk appeared. She was unable to cross the path and looked distressed. “Let me help you”, said the older monk. He picked her up and carried her over the mud. His younger male companion did not utter a word that night until they reached their lodging temple. Then after hours of restrained conversation, the younger monk exclaimed: “We monks do not touch females; it is too tempting for us and can create a bad outcome”. The older monk looked into the younger monks eyes and said, “I left the girl on the road. Are you still carrying her?” This ancient Zen story illustrates beautifully how so many of us are trapped in the habit of constantly “re-living” the past in our minds, thus dishonouring the present moment. The young monk wasted hours distressing himself with judgment, speculation, anxiety, resentment and ultimately self-perpetuated unhappiness as a direct result of not being mindful.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Meditation: Bringing Mindfulness into Everyday Life
Being connected to everything has disconnected us from ourselves and the preciousness of this present moment.
— L.M. Browning, Vagabonds and Sundries
Most people can hardly imagine what it would be like to be at peace with inner disturbance. But if you do not learn to be comfortable with it, you will devote your life to avoiding it. If you feel insecurity, it's just a feeling. You can handle a feelin. If you feel embarrassed, it's just a feeling. It's just a part of creation. If you feel jealousy and your heart burns, just look at it objectively, like you would a mild bruise. It's a thing in the universe that is passing through your system. Laugh at it, have fun with it, but don't be afraid of it. It cannot touch you unless you touch it.
— Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no "performance." There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intentino to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and now.Of course, with continued practice and the right kind of firm yet gentle effort, calmness and mindfulness and equanimity develop and deepen on their own, out of your commitment to dwell in stillness and to observe without reacting and judging. Realizatinos and insights, profound experiences of stillness and joy, do come. But it would be incorrect to say that we are practicing to make these experiences happen or that having more of them is better than having fewer of them.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
One practical way to do this is to look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them of just your thought about them. Sometimes our thoughts act like dream glasses. When we have them on, we see dream children, dream husband, dream wife, dream ob, dream colleagues, dream partners, dream friends. We can live in a dream present for a dream future...But if we take off the glasses, maybe, just maybe, we might see a little more accurately what is actually here.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
...but we're not being educated in how to be, only in how to accomplish. So it's all about acquisition, about getting stuff we don't have...As soon as you realize it's a thought pattern, you can write yourself a restraining order.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn
If a man speaks many holy words but he speaks and does not, this thoughtless man cannot enjoy the life of holiness: he is like a cowherd who counts the cows of his master.Whereas if a man speaks but a few holy words and yet he lives the life of those words, free from passion and hate and illusion—with right vision and a mind free, craving for nothing both now and hereafter—the life of this man is a life of holiness.
— Anonymous
Mindfulness works with continuous awareness of body, breath; feelings, thoughts, intentions. Our state of mind, our positive or negative attitude towards the world, is closely related to our experiences of happiness or suffering. Mindfulness is awareness of everything that is happening in the moment of 'Now'. Mindfulness is a self development technique that will change the focus of our mind towards happiness.Mindfulness is continuous undisturbed awareness of the present moment. Fully aware of here, and now, we pay attention to what is happening right in front of us, we set aside our mental and emotional baggage. To be mindful we have to re-train our mind.
— Nataša Nuit Pantović, Mindful Being
The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busy-ness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can’t change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we’re dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society’s culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life.
— L.M. Browning, Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations
what is not true does not exist in this moment.
— Bert McCoy
In this world, we are surrounded by fast-paced, empty static energy. They're like the empty calories of the soul. You have empty calories for your body, like a bag of potato chips for example, then you have empty calories for your soul, which are found in the static energy that doesn't really add to our emotional, spiritual, mental experience of living our lives. We have magical moments of connection with people, with nature, with Spirit, but then we rush out of those moments all too fast, in order to go straight back into the busy lanes that are full of things not worthwhile! Empty energies! So when we do that, we forget our magical, nourishing soul moments all too fast and we start caring about things that we shouldn't care about too much, stepping outside of the moments of eternity that we encounter, and going back into the empty noise. So I think that we need to picture ourselves as rocks in the river; we can let all of that rush by us, while we stay fortified where we are, lingering in the warmness of the noontime sun, the chill of the dawn , the reflections of dusk— like a rock in a river— let it all just rush by. Be magic.
— C. JoyBell C.
I acquired a central ability that was to help me through my entire career: patience. I'm serious. Patience is usually so underrated. I mean, for all these projects, from third grade all the way to eighth grade, I just learned things gradually, figuring out how to put electronic devices together without so much as cracking a book ... I learned to not worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it.
— Steve Wozniak
If you have mindfulness, if you feel safe, you recognize that you have plenty of conditions to be happy already, and that you don't need to run into the future in order to get a few more conditions.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society
Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
I would like people to remember of me, howinexhaustible was her mindfulness.
— Mary Oliver, Blue Horses
Always look at the function, its not what you did but why do you do it? Once you find the why then you walk through another door
— Matt Broadway-Horner, Managing Depression with CBT For Dummies
Mindfulness requires being a beginner. Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies of personal progress and change. Nobody benchpresses 100 kilos the first time they enter a gym.
— Paul Gibbons, The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture
Embracing a healing presence requires you to just be in the moment together.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
You don’t have to wait until you get to the top of a mountain, to enjoy the view.
— Eleanor Brownn
My caregiver mantra is to remember 'The only control you have is over the changes you choose to make.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
One goal of the mindful caregiver is to find ways to not feel ‘dis-eased’ in the caregiving process.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
Mindful living is an art. You do not have to be a monk or living in a monastery to practice mindfulness. You can practice it anytime, while driving your car or doing housework. Driving in mindfulness will make the time in your car joyful, and it will also help you avoid accidents. You can use the red traffic light as a signal of mindfulness, reminding you to stop and enjoy your breathing. Similarly, when you do the dishes after dinner you can practice mindful breathing, so the time dish washing is pleasant and meaningful. You do not feel you have to rush. If you hurry, you waste the time of dish washing. The time you spend washing dishes and doing all your other everyday tasks is precious. It is a time for being alive. When you practice mindful living, peace will bloom during your daily activities.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Caregiving will never be one-size-fits-all.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
Mindfulness promises a great number of desirable benefits, and is based on much more solid research than many competing ideas on how to change people.
— Paul Gibbons, The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture
The important thing in our understanding is to have a smooth, free-thinking way of observation. We have to think and to observe things without stagnation. We should accept things as they are without difficulty. Ou mind should be soft and open enough to understand things as they are. When our thinking is soft, it is called imperturbable thinking. This kind of thinking is always stable. It is called mindfulness.
— Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
My caregiver mantra is to remember: the only control you have is over the changes you choose to make.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
Many caregivers share that they often feel alone, isolated, and unappreciated. Mindfulness can offer renewed hope for finding support and value for your role as a caregiver…It is an approach that everyone can use. It can help slow you down some so you can make the best possible decisions for your care recipient. It also helps bring more balance and ease while navigating the caregiving journey.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
As your care recipient’s advocate, be involved, don’t accept the status quo, and don’t be afraid to voice your concerns.
— Nancy L. Kriseman, The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey
Reading teaches us receptivity....It teaches us to receive, in stillness and attentiveness, a voice possessed temporarily, on loan....And as we grow accustomed to receiving books in stillness and attentiveness, so we can grow to receive the world, also possessed temporarily.
— Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Happiness has more to do with giving than taking. Kamon 2015
— Kamon, Yeah! I Am Happy Now!
First, people were not thinking about what they were doing 47 per cent of the time. Second, people were unhappier when their minds were wandering than they were not. And third, what people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than what they were doing.
— David Michie, Mindfulness Is Better Than Chocolate: A Practical Guide to Enhanced Focus and Lasting Happiness in a World of Distractions
Mindfulness is the awareness of what is going on in us and around us in the present moment. It requires stopping, looking deeply, and recognizing both the uniqueness of the moment and its connection to everything that has gone on before and will go on in the future.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Life is very simple. Just sometimes put your head away, sometimes behead yourself, sometimes look with no clouds in the eyes - just look. Sometimes sit by the side of a tree - just feel. By the side of a waterfall - listen. Lie down on the beach and listen to the roar of the ocean, feel the sand, the coolness of it, or look at the stars, and let that silence penetrate you. Or look at the dark night and let that velvety darkness surround you, envelop you, dissolve you. This is the way of the simple heart.
— Osho, The Buddha Said...: Meeting the Challenge of Life's Difficulties
It is good to stop by the track for a space, put aside the knapsack, wipe the brows, and talk a little of the upper slopes of the mountain we think we are climbing, would but the trees let us see it.
— H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia
In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance gives Billy Crystal some profoundly simple advice. When Crystal asks him the secret of life, Palance holds up a forefinger, answers with a single word: "One."Choose one thing. Do it to the best of your ability. Let it go. Pick something else. Repeat endlessly.
— Lionel Fisher, Celebrating Time Alone: Stories Of Splendid Solitude
Mindfulness describes a "state of becoming" that places the individual beyond judgment and definition.
— Celeste Cooper, Broken Body, Wounded Spirit: Balancing the See-Saw of Chronic Pain: Spring Devotions
We are, all of us, always only one breath or softening of our thought away from an invasion of divine wonder and fresh miracles. Soul waits for any small opening of our hearts to steal into everyday life.
— Jacob Nordby
...there is something very vital happening when we breathe—without it we die—but trying to speed it up, force it, grasp it, push it away or control it tends to get in the way. As in breathing, so in life—we can learn a lot from the natural rhythm, pace, and un-fussiness of the way breath continues its work, without making a big deal out of it.
— Ed Halliwell
Much of the time the mind is wandering, either drawn to focus, ruminate, or push away unpleasant experiences, or chasing after stuff we like. But if we don’t practise being still, we are prone to get blown about by every wind, buffeted by the ups and downs of life. By training to pay attention precisely and gently to the breath, coming back again and again, we cultivate a resilience that allows us to be present when difficulty and temptation arises. Distractions still come, but we don’t get so lost in them.
— Ed Halliwell
There is no work-life balance. We have one life. What's most important is that you be awake for it.
— Janice Marturano
Every moment is utterly unique and will not be continued in eternity. This fact gives life its poignancy and should concentrate your attention on what you are experiencing now.
— Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
The mystical perception (which is only “mystical” if reality is limited to what can be measured by the intellect and senses) is remarkably consistent in all ages and all places. All phenomena are processes, connections, all is in flux…have the mind screens knocked away to see there is no real edge to anything, that in the endless interpenetration of the universe, a molecular flow, a cosmic energy shimmers in all stone and steel as well as flesh…
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
The daily mindfulness, consistency, and discipline is ultimately more important than the amount of time. In other words, it’s more about quality than quantity. If you use 15 minutes effectively, you’ll accomplish more than you would be able to with two hours of unfocused, random actions.
— Simon S. Tam, Music Business Hacks
I was unprepared for the firsthand experience of mindfulness. The way that awareness … revealed a sense of well-being right there in the heat of my emotions.
— Dawn Downey, Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Stories about Tripping over My Principles on the Road to Transformation
Awareness is bliss.
— Francy Pillo-Blocka
Now is the only time you have. Change is happening. Give up your desire to control the world
— Kelly    Martin, When Everyone Shines But You - Saying Goodbye To I'm Not Good Enough
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
— Emo Philips
Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is not 'How many people have you spoken to about Christ this week?' but 'How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?
— Eugene H. Peterson
The leaves that remain are only a very small part of the tea. The tea that goes into me is a much bigger part of the tea. It is the richest part.We are the same; our essence has gone into our children, our friends, and the entire universe. We have to find ourselves in those directions and not in the spent tea leaves.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.
— No Death, No Fear
If I don't understand you, I may be angry at you, all the time. We are not capable of understanding each other, and that is the main source of human suffering.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
The son needs the father to have access to his source, and the father needs the son to have access to the future and the infinite.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
The 'peace' the gospel brings is never the absence of conflict, but an ineffable divine reassurance within the heart of conflict; a peace that surpasses understanding.
— Walter Wink
There will always be more questions. Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.
— David Levithan
What often matters more than the activity we're doing at a moment in time is how we feel about it.
— Brigid Schulte, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
But work is life only when done in mindfulness. otherwise, one becomes life the person "who lives as though dead." We need to light our own torch in order to carry on. But the life of each one of us is connected with the life of those around us. If we know how to live in mindfulness, if we know how to preserve and care for our own mind and heart then thanks to that our brothers and sisters will also know how to live in mindfulness.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
We don't practice hospitality to point other people to ourselves, our church, or even our beliefs. We practice hospitality to point people toward the ultimate welcome that God gives every person through Christ.
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
Through it all, we attempt to bring balance to the present moment,understanding that in patience lies wisdom,knowing that what will come next will be determined in large measure by how we are now.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
WHY PARADIGMS MATTERIdeas drive results. People's beliefs drive their actions. Actions that stem from a simple, complete and accurate paradigm result in personal fulfillment, harmonious relationships, and economic prosperity.Actions based on false, incomplete and inaccurate paradigms, however well intended or passionately defended, are the cause of widespread misery, suffering and deprivation.As detailed in Rethinking Survival: Getting to the Positive Paradigm of Change, a fatal information deficit explains the worldwide leadership deficit and related budget deficits. In a dangerous world where psychological and economic warfare compete with religious extremism and terrorism to undo thousands of years of incremental human progress, a healing balance is urgently needed. Restoring a simple, complete and accurate paradigm of leadership and relationships now could make the difference between human survival on the one hand, and the extinction of the human race (or the end of civilization as we know it), on the other. p. 7.
— Patricia E. West, The Positive Paradigm Handbook: Make Yourself Whole Using the Wheel of Change
Praise be to God that hope is much more than how we feel on a given day. It exists outside of us
—  it is an entity in itself.
Rethink success: Few people will ever discover that the most important business they will ever run.. is their life!
— Tony Dovale
We must work for the good and commit ourselves to postures of global selflessness, even if we can't figure out all the details surrounding the foreign dictators, food shortages, and fair trade. We're called to lean in, to work as hard as we can toward the good, and then trust in God who says, 'The way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.' We're called to be witnesses of how God is at play in the world.
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
There are two ways to wash dishes: One is to wash them in order to make them clean
—  the other is to wash them in order to wash them.
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on earth.
— Línjì Yìxuán
In your haste you walk far too fast. And in doing so you often leave your soul behind.
— Anonymous
Like some homeopathic cure, our very sense of imprisonment can be a step toward liberation. We need not rebel against our temporally determined roles. Merely to recognize them is to limit their power over us. The liberation implied by such awareness is threefold. To understand one’s own temporal determinism is to establish, above and beyond what one says and does, an analytic posture toward the present as history; it is to achieve, amid the earnest vanities of contemporary society, an easing humility; it is to mark off, as territory precious and imperiled, the moments and pursuits that are left to our choice.
— Robert Grudin
Global citizenship means simply being willing to focus on the game, to notice the world and the people in it. It does not mean noticing your world, but the world. It means being conscious of the fact that you, and your country, are not the center of God's universe. It is the recognition that the world is made up of people with similar needs, desires, responsibilities, and dreams. It is the willingness to connect to people all over the world, realizing that the choices you make each day affect them and that their decisions affect you. It is noticing that the world is your family.
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ultimate luxury sedan, to embody society's standard of beauty, and to achieve historical scientific breakthroughs that we conveniently forget our family members in other parts of the world who must walk miles each day in their only set of clothing for the opportunity to go to school.
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
If we allow our American mindset of consumption to spill into our understanding of what a Christian is, we are in danger of living irrespective of world family.
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
Everyone's life changes when they meet their Obi-Wan & their Yoda, or their Morpheus & their Oracle; those who help remove the veil.
— Brandi L. Bates
When life is good do not take it for granted as it will pass. Be mindful, be compassionate and nurture the circumstances that find you in this good time so it will last longer. When life falls apart always remember that this too will pass. Life will have its unexpected turns.
— Ajahn Brahm
Be selective in your battles...
— Brandi L. Bates, Remains To Be Seen
This is today! What will tomorrow bring? Life arrives and departs on its own schedule, not ours; it's time to travel light, and be ready to go wherever it takes us.
— Meg Wolfe, The Minimalist Woman's Guide to Having It All
Judgement is poverty.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home
Cooking gives you the opportunity to meet the things you eat. You can touch each carrot or olive and get to know its smell and texture.You can feel its weight and notice its color and form. If it is going to become part of you, it seems worthy, at least, of acknowledgment, respect, and thanks. It takes much time and care in order for things to grow, and many labors are needed to bring these ingredients to the kitchen. There is a lot to be grateful for that takes place between the wheat field and the dumpling.
— Gary Thorp, Sweeping Changes:  Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks
Write that novel, sail that boat. And if you can't, immerse yourself in the fantasy, be the ultimate dabbler, just enjoy what it is you enjoy. It'll help you get well if you're going to get well, and it'll help you sail that great boat in the sky if that's what's going to happen. Onwards and Upwards. No regrets.
— Meg Wolfe, The Minimalist Woman's Guide to Having It All
According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood’s chemistry, then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts.In fact, Dr. Lipton’s research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes and create over thirty thousand variations of products from each gene. He gives more detail by saying that the gene programs are contained within the nucleus of the cell, and you can rewrite those genetic programs through changing your blood chemistry.
— Bruce H. Lipton
When I say ‘practice’ I don’t meanrepeating an act until you get it right. In this use, it means to instill regular discipline to accomplish a specific task, ritual without which we feel incomplete, or that our experience of each day is less.
— S. Kelley Harrell, Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism
The beauty of mindful-life-breath meditation is that you are not restricted to having to sit in the lotus position to be present. Whether you are on a busy train, driving a car or walking down a crowded high-street, you can easily remind yourself to focus on your breathing. Appreciate the subtle sensation of oxygen flowing in and out of your nostrils.
— Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Meditation: Bringing Mindfulness into Everyday Life
The pursuit of material-external things as if they can provide deep and lasting happiness is contributing to a dwindling of real meaning and is a factor contributing to an increase in mental health problems. It just isn't possible to fill the hole inside us by piling up the things outside us." pg9
— Dr Stephen McKenzie and Dr Craig Hassed
I used to size people up to see whether they were a good advert for meditation. Then at some point it clicked that there wasn't a type of person they were going to become. They were each just more and more themselves. Jim was very Jim, Isaac was unique in his Isaac-ness and Debbie was increasingly Debbie. That was a great relief - that I could relax into being Tessa.
— Tessa Watt, Introducing Mindfulness: A Practical Guide
In the ancient Indian Pali language, the words for mind and heart are the same. And the Chinese character for mindfulness is a combination of two characters. One part means now and the other means mind or heart. So, when you hear the word mindfulness you can also consider it to mean heartfulness.
— Shamash Alidina
Mindfulness does not erase negative memories
—  it 'transcends' them giving us back our deepest power which resides in our hearts.
When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.
— Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart
If you love too much, you lose yourself.If you love too little, you never find yourself.
— Janet Gallagher Nestor, Nurturing Wellness Through Radical Self-Care: A Living in Balance Guide and Workbook
That is what happens when the heart door opens- you become less yourself than part of everything.' Many are the sentinels who guard that door: our fears, our self-importance, our meanness, our greed, our bitterness, and others.
— Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart
Our ultimate goal is to be fully present for life. It takes practice
— Janet Gallagher Nestor
Positive thoughts help us construct a positive life, one thought at a time.
— Janet Gallagher Nestor, Nurturing Wellness Through Radical Self-Care: A Living in Balance Guide and Workbook
See if you can approach your own practice with a healthy combination of mindfulness, playfulness, precision, and curiosity
— Cyndi Lee
The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own.
— Patti Digh, Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally
Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal. . . . The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life. . . . We may pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical. . . . You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing "no thing," and simply notice what you are experiencing.
— Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
We live in an incredibly dynamic universe that gives us what we wish for, like a waking dream
— Cynthia Sue Larson, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World
The teachings of the Buddha could be summarized in four short sentences. ... [The Buddha] said ...The bad things, don't do them.The good things, try to do them.Try to purify, subdue your own mind.That is the teaching of all buddhas.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
Our minds of infinite possibilities have been plowed, seeded and cultivated by every word, institution and sacred belief we hold dear, to produce a foul harvest of exclusion, apathy, brute domination and death.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
— Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.
— Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.
— Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
The is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.
— Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
How you refill. Lying there. Something like happiness, just like water, pure and clear pouring in. So good you don’t even welcome it, it runs through you in a bright stream, as if it has been there all along.
— Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
...mindfulness - it isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's being present in the moment. When I'm with you, I'm with you. Right now. That's all. No more and no less.
— Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club
The greatest gift you can give (yourself or anyone else) is just being present
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
Mindfulness is like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
I vow to ingest only items that preserve well-being, peace, and joy in my body and my consciousness... Practicing a diet is the essence of this precept. Wars and bombs are the products of our consciousness individually and collectively. Our collective consciousness has so much violence, fear, craving, and hatred in it, it can manifest in wars and bombs. The bombs are the product of our fear... Removing the bombs is not enough. Even if we could transport all the bombs to a distant planet, we would still not be safe, because the roots of the wars and the bombs are still intact in our collective consciousness. Transforming the toxins in our collective consciousness is the true way to uproot war (72-73).
— Thich Nhat Hanh, For a Future to Be Possible: Buddhist Ethics for Everyday Life
You cannot pour more water into a full cup without causing a spillage.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
In mindfulness, acceptance always comes first, change comes after.
— Shamash Alidina
In any given situation there will always be more dumb people than smart people. We ain't many!
— Ken Kesey, Kesey
Mindfulness allows you to face the past with courage, whether it is scarred with pain or caressed with joy, and it gently holds you in the safe haven of the present without allowing you to become overwhelmed with what may or may not be waiting in the future.
— Deborah A. Beasley
The Third Precept, to refrain from sexual misconduct, reminds us not to act out of sexual desire in such a way as to cause harm to another... The spirit of this precept asks us to look at the motivation behind our actions. To pay attention in this way allows us, as laypeople, to discover how sexuality can be connected to the heart and how it can be an expression of love, caring, and genuine intimacy. We have almost all been fools at some time in our sexual lives, and we have also used sex to try to touch what is beautiful, to touch another person deeply. Conscious sexuality is an essential part of living a mindful life (86).
— Jack Kornfield, For a Future to Be Possible: Buddhist Ethics for Everyday Life
Mindful consumption is the object of this precept. We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our bodies and our consciousness, showing ingratitude toward our ancestors, our parents, and future generations (66).
— Thich Nhat Hanh, For a Future to Be Possible: Buddhist Ethics for Everyday Life
Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff.
— Jack Gantos, What Would Joey Do?
The best sex takes place in the mind first
— Jenna Jameson, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale
Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?No, she said quickly. No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much - livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
I don't like phones. You can't be sure people are paying attention to you when you're talking to them.
— Tawni O'Dell, Back Roads
Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel.
— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III
Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doin
— John Green
Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together. 
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
When I was a boy, my mother would tell me that one of the best things in life is the knowledge that our story isn't over yet. Our story may have come to a close, but your story is still yet to be told. Make it a story worthy of you
— Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn
Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stories? To hear them? Who will ever know that I existed? What if we are the only ones left -- who will know our stories then? Who will remember those?
— Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth
No story lives unless someone wants to listen. So thank you, all of you.
— J.K. Rowling
In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.
— Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot
Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?
— Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
Every story is us
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us.
— George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone
I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.
— Peach-Pit, Shugo Chara!, Vol. 2: Friends in Need
They say a story loses something with each telling.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Book of Tomorrow
I have always thought that librarians are a little bit like doctors, travel agents and professors all rolled into one. We all know that a great story can lift spirits, take you anywhere in the world you want to go and in any time period to boot, and the lessons you learn from a good book can buoy your own convictions and even change your life. 
— Dorothea Benton Frank
It could have happened lots of ways. But this is the way it happened. This is the path we took. This is our story.
— Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You
What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts
— Pat Conroy, South of Broad
Every song deserves lyrics. Deserves a story to tell.
— Courtney C. Stevens, Faking Normal
My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.
— Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
Creatures of the Darkness BY VICKI JORDANIt was world of vampires and demons, where innocence was rare and so were the living. It was a world of darkness,where light had been outlawed and nightfall had swallowedus whole. An epic war had been fought, and the creatures of the darkhad finally prevailed over the promoters of the light. Finally,for the first time in existence, the people of the shadows couldcome out and freely walk among one another in the rays of the dying sun, which had once been used to shun them away. A little girl, a child of the light, had survived the battle and crawled out from under the ashes of the destruction. She looked around at her altered world in dismay and confronted a vampireabout the changes, of which she did not approve. “Why did you turn my world into a world of night, and make wrong into a new form of right? How could you make all the light disappear, and with it everyone I once loved so dear? Why are the shadows now the new sun, and why is everything lost what you havewon?” The vampire looked down at the little girl with amusement and delight.  “Because, little girl, this is the real world you see, where there’s nolight to shine on false identities. We didn’t destroy the world just to scare; we simply uncovered what was already there. What has come out was all the darkness that was once hidden within, and you’ll soon meet the darkness in you once my fangs pierce your skin.”We are our own greatest fears…..
— Chris Colfer, Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal