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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
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 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
I am not the same having seen the moon shine
on the other side of the world.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Shoot for the moon.
Even if you miss,
you'll land among the stars.
- Les Brown
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side
which he never shows to anybody.
- Mark Twain
The youth gets together his materials
to build a bridge to the moon,
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth,
and, at length, the middle-aged man
concludes to build a woodshed with them.
- Henry David Thoreau
Three things cannot be long hidden:
the sun, the moon, and the truth.
- The Buddha
When I admire the wonders of a sunset
or the beauty of the moon,
my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon,
it will be an entire nation.
For all of us must work to put him there.
- John F. Kennedy
Yeah we all shine on, like the moon,
and the stars, and the sun.
- John Lennon
We need to find God, and he cannot
be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence.
See how nature - trees, flowers, grass-
grows in silence; see the stars,
the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
- Mother Teresa
We return thanks to our mother,
the earth, which sustains us.
We return thanks to the rivers and streams
which supply us with water.
We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines
for the cure of our diseases.
We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters,
the beans and squashes, which give us life.
We return thanks to the bushes and trees,
which provide us with fruit.
We return thanks to the wind,
which, moving the air, has banished diseases.
We return thanks to the moon and the stars,
which have given us their light when the sun was gone.
We return thanks to our grandfather He-no,
that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles,
and has given us his rain.
We return thanks to the sun,
that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.
Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit,
in whom is embodied all goodness,
and who directs all things for the good of his children.
- Iroquois traditional
Hunger makes a thief of any man.
- Pearl S. Buck
Procrastination is the thief of time.
- Edward Young
In order to be happy with a man,
you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot
and not try to understand her at all.
- Helen Rowland
Well excuse me - we've got something
a little unusual going on here -
time travel, parallel universes,
or just a little common ordinary insanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There is only one thing about which I am certain,
and that is that there is very little
about which one can be certain.
- W. Somerset Maugham
All you need is love.
But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.
- Charles M. Schulz
The trouble with the world is not
that people know too little,
but that they know so many things that ain't so.
- Mark Twain
Clothes make the man.
Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain
The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake.
- the movie The Little Mermaid (1989)
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe,
then I'd have to say that the universe
aimed rather low and settled for very little.
- George Carlin
Magic is natural to Wizards,
and only a little harder for the rest of us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The church is always trying to get other people to reform;
it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little,
by way of example.
- Mark Twain
Twinkle, twinkle little bat
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
- Lewis Carroll
A little girl at the wedding afterwards asked her mother
why the bride changed her mind.
What do you mean? responded her mother.
Well, she went down the aisle with one man,
and came back with another.
- Anonymous
If you can't annoy somebody with what you write,
I think there's little point in writing.
- Kingsley Amis
"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do;
the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
- Mary Wilson Little
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge:
it is those who know little, and not those who know much,
who so positively assert that this or that problem
will never be solved by science.
- Charles Darwin
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mother is the name for God
in the lips and hearts of little children.
- William Makepeace Thackeray
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up
in our politics and say definite things which mean something,
or whether we shall always go on using generalities
to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
I never accepted the idea
that I had to be guided by
some pattern or blueprint.
- Little Richard
Man knows so much and does so little.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Genuine heroes - no batteries needed -
bring lots of open-mind and at least a little courage.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Most truths are so naked
that people feel sorry for them
and cover them up,
at least a little bit.
- Edward R. Murrow
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back
and realize they were the big things.
- Robert Brault
Unlike grown-ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates
Little strokes,
Fell great oaks.
- Benjamin Franklin
If i had known... i would have lingered
over my coffee a little longer.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Alone we can do so little;
together we can do so much.
- Helen Keller
A little neglect may breed great mischief.
- Benjamin Franklin
I get by with a little help from my friends.
- John Lennon
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God
who is sending a love letter to the world.
- Mother Teresa
Patience, persistence, and perseverance.
A little more each day, a little better each day.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I have always held firmly to the thought
that each one of us can do a little
to bring some portion of misery to an end.
- Albert Schweitzer
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
- Jimmy Johnson
Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Reading, after a certain age,
diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein
Love is an act of faith,
and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
- Erich Fromm
My definition of success is to live your life in a way
that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain -
and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel
a lot more pleasure than they do pain.
- Tony Robbins
We never repent of having eaten too little.
- Thomas Jefferson
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
- Winston Churchill
It is of the small joys and little pleasures
that the greatest of our days are built.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.
- Epictetus
Little minds have little worries,
big minds have no time for worries.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Campaign behavior for wives:
Always be on time.
Do as little talking as humanly possible.
Lean back in the parade car
so everybody can see the president.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
THE fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
- Carl Sandburg
You should never be content with so little,
when you can reach out for something big.
- Charles L. Allen
(This quote is about making a big difference
in the world - not about greed)
Our "Rainbows and Butterflies" are the small miracles of our life -
the little things that are so easy to overlook,
yet so awe inspiring when we take a moment
to notice and to pay attention.
Give thanks for the rainbows, for the butterflies,
for all God's creatures - large and small,
for the bright blue sky and the soft fog and the gentle rain,
for the tree veiled in the season's first frost,
for the baby's laugh,
for the touch of a hand and the whispered "I love you."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus
The choice is to work alone to be a little
more successful than the next person,
or to work together for the great betterment of humanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Pity may represent little more
than the impersonal concern
which prompts the mailing of a check,
but true sympathy is the personal concern
which demands the giving of one's soul.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.