Mark Hoffman > Mark's Quotes

Showing 1-30 of 81

« previous 1 2 3 next »

#1

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: compassion, einstein, nature, philosophy

7505 likes

#2

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

tags: inspirational, life, philosophy

5907 likes

#3

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ”
― Goldie Hawn

tags: compassion, depression, flower, growth, illness, kindness, obstacles, perseverance, wisdom

1017 likes

#4

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

tags: inspirational, values

2791 likes

#5

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

tags: ataraxy, be-yourself, confidence, fitting-in, individuality, misattributed-dr-seuss, those-who-matter

130211 likes

#6

“Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out—these become to us the self that is most real.”
― Tara Brach

tags: anxiety, meditation, pain, radical-acceptance, shame

31 likes

#7

“The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

64 likes

#8

“I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we need thoughts to keep the emotion rolling. So if we wonder why we lock into painful emotional states like anxiety, depression, or rage, we need look no further than our own endless stream of inner dialogue.”
― Tara Brach

tags: buddhist-psychology, emotions, spirituality

46 likes

#9

“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

tags: acceptance-of-oneself, lovingkindness, self-confidence, spirituality

72 likes

#10

“Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There’s less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what’s happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

tags: buddhist-psychology, emotional-healing, meditation

37 likes

#11

“Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal. . . . The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life. . . . We may pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical. . . . You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing "no thing," and simply notice what you are experiencing.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

tags: mindfulness, pausing

32 likes

#12

“If you had a person in your life treating you the way you treat yourself, you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago...”
― Cheri Huber, There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate

tags: self-hate, self-hatred, self-loathing

252 likes

#13

“Getting where you want to be has everything to do with awareness, and nothing to do with willpower.”
― Cheri Huber

27 likes

#14

“Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear.”
― Cheri Huber

30 likes

#15

“It doesn't matter what did or did not happen then. It only matters what happens NOW.”
― Cheri Huber

12 likes

#16

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

2139 likes

#17

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”
― Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

tags: books, education, reading

348 likes

#18

“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.”
― Thomas Carlyle

47 likes

#19

“Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.”
― Thomas Carlyle

tags: troubles, worry

52 likes

#20

“No pressure, no diamonds”
― Mary Case

55 likes

#21

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. ”
― Thomas Carlyle

66 likes

#23

“Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

74 likes

#24

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

tags: diligence, fortune, success

72 likes

#25

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
― Anglican clergyman

tags: aspirations, prayer, spirituality

1318 likes

#26

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

tags: inspirational, politics, presidential

8513 likes

#27

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life

tags: decisiveness, fear, inaction, just-do-it, risk, timidity, wisdom

764 likes

#28

“Don't mistake activity with achievement.”
― John Wooden

tags: achievement, acquirement, act, action, activity, attainment, completion, conclusion, deed, doing, energy, enterprise, exertion, feat, fulfullment, labor, occurence, perfection, performance, production, service, success, undertaking, venture, work

628 likes

#29

“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?”
― John Wooden

tags: attitude, excellence, inspirational

309 likes