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The Sweetest Strawberry:
by 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

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

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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

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

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

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

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.

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

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- Carl Jung

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be,
at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

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

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius

I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
- Oscar Wilde

If a man can... make a better mousetrap,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If thou wilt make a man happy,
add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
- Epicurus

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy

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

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
- Chinese proverb

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
- John Morley

The man who goes alone can start today;
but he who travels with another
must wait till that other is ready.
- Henry David Thoreau

Great and good are seldom the same man.
- Winston Churchill

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln

Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Science gives man knowledge, which is power;
religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man in debt is so far a slave.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion
to his commitment to excellence,
regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard

A man's good name is his best monument
- from an old churchyard at Lockerbie, Scotland

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe,
that lures him to evil ways.
- The Buddha

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha

A great man is always willing to be little.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb

Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen

If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln

A great secret of success is to go through life
as a man who never gets used up.
- Albert Schweitzer

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie