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Welcome to these Zen Koan Quotes of the Day from my large collection of positive, romantic, and funny quotes.
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
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
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
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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
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
This above all, to thine own self be true.
- William Shakespeare
All our dreams can come true,
if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci
The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
The book of life is filled with incoherent riddles.
Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
You do not need anyone's permission to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
- Oscar Wilde
Play with life, laugh with life,
dance lightly with life,
and smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I do not need anyone's permission to be my true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer
If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
- Yiddish proverb
A true "moral compass" never points toward discrimination.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
True happiness... is not attained
through self-gratification,
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller
If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true
were really true, there would be little hope of advance.
- Orville Wright
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates
A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates
Everything deep is also simple
and can be reproduced simply
as long as its reference
to the whole truth is maintained.
But what matters is not what is witty
but what is true.
- Albert Schweitzer
The true sign of intelligence
is not knowledge but imagination.
- Albert Einstein
'Tis strange - but true;
for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
- Lord Byron
Society censors our actions,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The true delight is in the finding out,
rather than in the knowing.
- Isaac Asimov
True love means putting the other person before yourself,
and honoring the relationship above all.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -
broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false,
and lofty things from low.
- Helen Keller
In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west;
people create distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true.
- The Buddha
Women are like teabags.
We don't know our true strength
until we are in hot water!
- Eleanor Roosevelt
It's not what you don't know that kills you,
it's what you know for sure that ain't true.
- Mark Twain
Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We seek opinions that are likely to
support what we want to be true.
- Thomas Gilovich
Only those who have learned the power
of sincere and selfless contribution
experience life's deepest joy: true fulfillment.
- Tony Robbins
You are never given a wish without also
being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
- Richard Bach
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.
- Lao Tzu
Be true to thyself.
- William Shakespeare
(paraphrase of Shakespeare's famous quote)
True learning is not about facts,
but about conscious appreciation
of the experience of living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Know that you do not need anyone's permission
to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
- Henry David Thoreau
True love has no limits.
- Anonymous
True love is a process of co-creation
in which neither feels ownership or superiority.
Jealousy is a highly destructive force
for love and relationships.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
True wisdom cannot be learned in a lifetime,
but can be revealed in a moment,
for it has always lived within each and every one of us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Only one who devotes himself to a cause
with his whole strength and soul
can be a true master.
For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
- Albert Einstein
Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin -
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
- Socrates
Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Our actions are constrained by fear of reprisal,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson
The secret of making dreams come true
can be summarized in four C's.
They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy;
and the greatest of these is Confidence.
- Walt Disney
"To know" is to know that you know nothing.
That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Confucius
The key to happiness is having dreams.
The key to success is making your dreams come true.
- Anonymous
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
We censor our actions, but
our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If evil be spoken of you
and it be true, correct yourself,
if it be a lie, laugh at it.
- Epictetus
The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.
- The Buddha
Many persons have a wrong idea of
what constitutes true happiness.
It is not attained through self-gratification
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller
Loving, hating, having expectations:
all these are attachments.
Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.
- Lao Tzu
There are trivial truths and there are great truths.
The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false.
The opposite of a great truth is also true.
- Niels Bohr
Mastering others is strength.
Mastering yourself is true power.
- Lao Tzu
Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced,
and today we think this more than ever, and are just as wrong
as all previous ages that thought so.
How often have we not seen the truth condemned!
It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung
It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends.
The mean and cowardly can never know what true friendship means.
- Charles Kingsley
It costs you nothing to make another happy -
and you gain your true self through the act of spreading joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A true friend never gets in your way
unless you happen to be going down.
- Arnold H. Glasgow
I Honor My True Self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.
I am not bound to succeed,
but I am bound to live by the light that I have.
I must stand with anybody that stands right,
and stand with him while he is right,
and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
Your inner thoughts reveal your true nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
- Francis Bacon
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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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