We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable,is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is of the nature of wisdom.

If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

If you meditate, sooner or later you will come upon love. If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

The only real laughter comes from despair.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.