Daniel Peterson > Daniel's Quotes

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
― Julian of Norwich

“A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“For if the will has nothing to employ it and love has no present object with which to busy itself, the soul finds itself without either support or occupation, its solitude and aridity cause it great distress and its thoughts involve it in the severest conflict.”
― Santa Teresa de Jesús, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.”
― Peter Rollins

“The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.”
― Peter Rollins

“'Mysticism' here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil: Cosmic Superimposition

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“If every lover was treated like they matter — everyday; valentine’s day wouldn’t be so 'special.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Expensive clothing is a poor man’s attempt to appear prosperous.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Closing one’s eyes when praying doesn’t increase the odds of the prayer being answered. It merely decreases the odds of being distracted.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“He who is ready to die for his country is a fool. For he didn’t choose where he was born; and where he was born didn’t choose him.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“If human beings weren’t ‘dumbable’ enough to be made soldiers, war would be nothing but an exchange of swear words between a handful of individuals.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton." ...and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It 's a ghost!"
Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. it's that only that gets me. science is only in your mind too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. or ghosts either."
Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Law of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts."
...we see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“I’m thinking: Yes, right—there is a point to sitting around all day with your eyes closed: to gain some control over the mind, to see through the forces that drive us—and drive us nuts.”
― Dan Harris, 10% Happier

“Most of conflicts and tensions are due to language. Don't pay so much attention to the words. In love’s country, language doesn't have its place. Love's mute.”
― Shams Tabrizi

“Don’t search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell.”
― Shams Tabrizi

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“My throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky and you want it, but eventually the need passes, and you feel restored.”
― Keith Ablow, Denial