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The Sweetest Strawberry:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice,
he caught hold of the root of a wild vine
and swung himself over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where,
far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black,
little by little started to gnaw away the vine.
The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand,
he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.
- Zen Koan
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
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The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan
Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan
Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative
of the dignity of my high vocation,
and its many responsibilities.
Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way
to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
- Mother Teresa
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
- The Bible
Great and good are seldom the same man.
- Winston Churchill
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man is free who is not master of himself.
- Epictetus
To measure the man, measure his heart.
- Malcolm S. Forbes
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain
An honest man is always a child.
- Socrates
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
Well, I don't know what will happen now.
We've got some difficult days ahead.
But it doesn't matter with me now.
Because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind. Like any man,
I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will.
And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over.
And I've seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we,
as a people, will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If thou wilt make a man happy,
add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
- Epicurus
Feel Unity with Spirit and All Creation
All things share the same breath the
beast, the tree, the man... the air
shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle [actually written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1972]
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu
As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
- Meister Eckhart
Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along,
because once I have persuaded him, he will stick.
If I scare him, he will stay just as long
as he is scared, and then he is gone.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is what a man thinks of himself
that really determines his fate.
- Henry David Thoreau
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
A man in debt is so far a slave.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile
No man is a failure who enjoys life.
- William Feather
Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb
Each man is the architect of his own fate.
- Appius Claudius
If a man does his best, what else is there?
- George S. Patton
When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
- Anonymous
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth,
and if a man does not know what a thing is,
it is at least an increase in knowledge
if he knows what it is not.
- Carl Jung
I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe,
that lures him to evil ways.
- The Buddha
Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong
A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
- Yiddish Proverb
How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu
A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
- Seneca
Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.
- Lao Tzu
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha
The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes
A man's good name is his best monument
- from an old churchyard at Lockerbie, Scotland
Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus
You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei
Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man,
but if you're up there and you can hear me ...
show me the way... show me the way.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
- Charles Darwin
The man who can't dance thinks the band is no good.
- Polish Proverb
All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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