Quotes and Quick Inspiration

Volume Ten

From Tom Spencer's Soul of the Garden

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People's good deeds are used by the Eternal as seeds for planting trees in the Garden of Eden: thus, each of us creates our own Paradise.

- The Mezeritzer Rebbe

In hell, people starve because their hands are chained to six-foot-long chopsticks, too long to bring the rice to their mouths. Heaven is the same, only there, people feed each other.

- Vietnamese proverb

Common sense is strengthened by joy.

- Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Unshared joy is an unlighted candle.

-Spanish Proverb

We must not give only what we have; we must give what we are.

-Cardinal Mercia

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.

- Rabbi Harold Kushner

The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.

- Leo Stein

What is in your heart about your fellow man is most likely in his heart about you.

- Book of Deuteronomy

Every good deed is charity whether you come to your brother's assistance or just greet him with a smile.

-The Prophet Muhammad

Who is rich? One who is happy with what he has.

- Ethics of the Fathers 4:1

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.

-W. Beran Wolfe

Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold.

-Maurice Setter

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

-Albert Pike

Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.

-Maimonides

Whoever lives a godly life may become, not alone his own redeemer, but also in some degree the redeemer of the world.

- Hyman Enelow

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

- Baruch Spinoza

When one teaches, two learn.

-Robert Half

While praying, listen to the words very carefully. When your heart is attentive, your entire being enters your prayer without your having to force it.

- Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

To be a person of truth, be swayed neither by approval nor disapproval.
Work at not needing approval from anyone and you will be free to be who you really are.

- Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

- Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, but in what direction we are moving.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

-  Thoreau, from Walden

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

- Mary Howitt

There is no gardening without humility.

- Alfred Austin

He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have beautiful roses in his heart.

- S. Reynolds Hole

The sign of the friend of God is that he has three qualities: a generosity like that of the ocean, a compassion like that of the sun, and a humility like that of the earth.

-Bayazid in 'Attar, from "The Wisdom of Sufism," compiled by Leonard Lewisohn

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child--our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

-Thich Nhat Hanh, "Miracle of Mindfulness"

Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.

- Juvenal

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

- Cicero

Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.

- Russell Page

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.

- Gary Snyder

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

- Fra Giovanni

The thing that matters is not what you bear, but how you bear it.

-Seneca

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

- May Sarton

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

- Rabindranath Tagore

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

- Thomas Carlyle

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

- Albert Einstein
 

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

-Charles Spurgeon

To fight fear, act. To increase fear—wait, put off, postpone.

-David J. Schwartz

Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

-Andre Gide