Trying to change ourselves in order to please others – so that we can feel temporarily whole for having won their approval – is like cutting a flower into pieces so that it will fit into a vase.
Once you know what it means to choose in favor of yourself, there is no power in the universe that can make you choose against yourself.
The Peace you long for also longs for you.
Each time that you don’t know you are choosing, then of those choices you are not the chooser.
We conquer ourselves by learning patience, for she gives to us our longed for victory only in the surrender of self.
The smallest effort to remember the Divine, or even one of its timeless truths, connects you to a calmness whose power is in that secret strength found in all things deep.
Believing that anxious thoughts and feelings can restore order to your life is like using a chain-saw to fold your laundry.
Life can only be as new as you Choose to be.
Real prayer, the soul-transformi ng kind, is self-discontinu ity. It is a conscious act of self-suspension arising from the wish for something new to occur...
You cannot separate the onset of a disturbing moment in life from the appearance of some simultaneous new possibility to know a deeper and more unshakable sense of peace.
Act on what you love, not from what you fear, and watch how fear fades as love grows.
Each moment of every one of my relationships serves as the secret path to the summit of myself.
The more time we spend considering the shortcomings of others, the smaller a person we become.
The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.
Real change isn’t found in some new way to think about yourself, but in freedom from the need to think about yourself at all.
Much like the hands of a clock go nowhere fast, anxious thoughts run us round-and-round without taking us anywhere!
The only thing worried thoughts have the power to change is what the next thing will be for you to worry over!
As the lesser is always found within the greater, so this principle holds true with regards to time and the eternal.
Everything passes. There is great beauty in this, both in the passing of pain and in the passing of pleasure. When things present themselves to you as permanent, don’t believe it.
If you don’t leap, you’ll never know what it’s like to fly.
Every relationship that we have in our lives – our contact with each person, place, and event – serves a very special, if yet to be realized purpose: They are mirrors that can serve to show us things about ourselves that can be realized in no other way.