An evil deed, like fresh milk, does not go bad suddenly. Smouldering, like fire covered by ashes, the evil deed follows the fool.
Do not have as friends harmful people, the wise person does not associate with the worst of people. Have as friends virtuous people, the wise person associates with the best of people.
Follow not after the vain, understand the ills of sense pleasures. One who is vigilant and meditative, obtains deep joy.
He who walks in the company of fools suffers much. Company with fools, as with an enemy, is always painful. Company with the wise is pleasure, like meeting with kinfolk.
If you are tossed about by doubts, full of strong thoughtless passions, and yearning only for that which is detrimental, your thirst will grow stronger and stronger, unquenched, and your pain will grow with your defilements.
Let the wise one control his thoughts, for they are difficult to perceive, often elusive, and they rush about frantically: a mind well controlled achieves peace and happiness.
Life is so very difficult. How can we be anything but kind.
Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are wise words when spoken, but fruitless these words are when not carried out by the speaker.
Live happily, not hating even those who are hostile. Live peacefully even amongst those that hate.
One who does not rouse themself when it is time to rise, who, though capable, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle person will never find their way to true knowledge.
Through vigilance, restraint and control the wise will construct and island that no flood will overcome.
Whatever the hateful do to the hateful, or an enemy to an enemy, worse is the harm of a misguided mind directed at oneself.
You yourself must make an effort. Buddhas are only show the way. The thoughtful who enter the way are freed from the bondage of defilements.
Right perspective is no perspective or all perspectives.
Wonder of wonders! Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men’s minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this.
Do not believe anything on the mere authority of teachers or priests. Accept as true and as the guide to your life only that which accords with your own reason and experience, after thorough investigation. Accept only that which contributes to the well-being of yourself and others.
A wrong action may not bring its reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once: like a smouldering fire concealed under ashes it consumes the wrongdoer, the fool.
He who never thinks of anything as ‘mine’ does not feel the lack of anything: he is never worried by a sense of loss.
Why cling to the pain and the wrongs of yesterday? Why hold on to the very things that keep you from hope and love.
Want what you have and you will always get what you want.