He Said, She Said ...

There is something about a good quote that can touch the soul, awaken the senses, inspire action, and spark creativity. I have been engaged in the awesomely nerdy hobby of collecting these things since I was in high school. I filled several notebooks with literally thousands of them. Due to my 26 year long love affair with Martial Arts, alot come from various warrior traditions. Here are a few of the ones that have had a profound effect on me and my beliefs. Some may be familiar, others not so much. I offer no explanation as to how they inspired or benefitted me. Take them as they are. As long as this list is, believe me, it is a short list.

"That which does not kill us only serves to make us stronger." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Dum spiro, spero (Latin), "While I breath, I hope" ~ Philemon

“A teacher is like a finger pointing the way to the moon. Look at the moon, not the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” – Bruce Lee

"Momma always said: Stupid is as stupid does." -- Forrest Gump

"Stupidity should be painful." -- Me

"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude." -- William James

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." -- Buddha

"Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without."-- Buddha

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." --Buddha

"All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else." -- Buddha

"I've always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way and you've got to have that drive and determination to overcome those obstacles on route to whatever it is that you want to accomplish." -- Chuck Norris

"A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough." -- Bruce Lee

"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer." -- Bruce Lee

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." -- Bruce Lee

"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind." -- Bruce Lee

"To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities." -- Bruce Lee

"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that." -- John Keats

"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." -- Wyatt Earp

"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be." -- Albert Einstein

"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." -- Albert Einstein

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -- Albert Einstein

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." -- Confucius

"In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher." -- Dalai Lama

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space." -- Johnny Cash

"A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting." -- Carlos Castaneda

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same." -- Carlos Castaneda

"To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do " -- Carlos Castaneda

"A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?" -- Kahlil Gibran

"I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end." -- Kahlil Gibran

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls." -- Kahlil Gibran

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'" -- Kahlil Gibran

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." -- Kahlil Gibran

"When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you." -- Kahlil Gibran

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth." -- Kahlil Gibran

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen." -- Epictetus

"No man is free who is not master of himself." -- Epictetus

"The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede." -- Eugen Herrigel

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing." -- Socrates

"To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." --Sun Tzu

"The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." -- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength." - Frances de Sales

"Without Knowledge, Skill cannot be focused. Without Skill, Strength cannot be brought to bear and without Strength, Knowledge may not be applied." - Alexander the Great's Chief Physician

"Given enough time, any man may master the physical. With enough knowledge, any man may become wise. It is the true warrior who can master both....and surpass the result." - Tien T'ai

"Act like a man of thought - Think like a man of action." - Thomas Mann

"It is a brave act of valor to condemn death, but where life is more terrible than death it is then the truest valor to dare to live." - Sir Thomas Brown

"We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training" -- Martial Arts maxim

"You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair." - Taisen Deshimaru, Zen Master

"The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer." -- Martial Arts proverb

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." - Confucius

"It is the very mind itself that leads the mind astray; Of the mind, Do not be mindless." -- Takuan Soho

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself" - Chinese Proverb

"Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death." -- Miyamoto Musashi

"There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within." -- Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the Martial Art of Aikido

“When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.” -- Carlos Casteneda

“A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.” -- Carlos Castaneda

“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.” -- Carlos Castaneda

"When a warrior makes the decision to take action, he should be prepared to die. If he is prepared to die, there shouldn’t be any pitfalls, any unwelcome surprises, any unnecessary acts. Everything should gently fall into place because he is expecting nothing." -- Toltec proverb

"As long as man feels that he is the most important thing in the world, he cannot really appreciate the world around him. He is like a horse with blinders; all he sees is himself, apart from everything else." -- Yaqui proverb

"It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power. A man is only the sum of his personal power, and that sum determines how he lives and how he dies." -- Yaqui proverb

“You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.” -- Dan Millman, from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.” -- Carlos Castaneda from Tales of Power