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What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- 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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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
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory'
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- Isaac Asimov
Apathy, indifference, not caring...
It may sound insensitive for me to say, "I don't care,"
but ask first to what I am indifferent.
I choose to be caring, compassionate
and kind toward all people,
and I also choose to be indifferent to gossip,
petty complaints, and idle chatter.
About those, I just don't care.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
True friendship is like sound health;
the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
- Charles Caleb Colton
The primal rhythmic power
and resonant sound of waves on the shore
are like the earth's heartbeat,
and become our connection with the body of nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Music is what feelings sound like.
- Anonymous
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty,
the contemplation of mystery,
or the search of truth or perfection
is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession
of such days is fatal to human life.
- Lewis Mumford
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
The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder
and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God.
- Jim Elliot
Overwhelm is not a pleasant condition.
The to-do list overflows,
the deadlines appear imminent and immovable.
There are too many demands upon too little of your time.
Does this sound familiar?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
AUM, the most primordial human sound -
and the sound most connected to Spirit,
is pronounced in these three parts:
A (as in mama) - a throat sound
that vibrates in the abdomen - signifies waking.
U (as in who) - a tongue sound
that vibrates in the chest - signifies dreaming.
M (as in mama) - a lip sound
that vibrates in the head - signifies sleeping.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Visualize your end result as having already been accomplished.
Let the image of your success play on the giant screen
in full color with surround sound -
so real you can smell and taste it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To the Master's honor all must turn,
each in its track, without a sound,
forever tracing Newton's ground.
- Albert Einstein
Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition
for building up a sound education.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
I love being married.
It's so great to find that one special person
you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
- Rita Rudner
If you are not one of us, you are one of them.
- the movie The Matrix (1999)
Be careful not to do your good deeds
when there's no one watching you.
- Tom Lehrer
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence.
- Ogden Nash
There's a couple of things they don't teach you
in Harvard Business School,
one is how to cope with defeat,
the other is how to handle a shotgun.
- The Simpsons Movie (2007)
No one knows what's next, but everybody does it.
- George Carlin
Oh, if only God would give me some sign.
If He would just speak to me once. Anything.
One sentence. Two words. If He would just cough.
- the movie Love and Death
Give a man one rabbit, and he will eat for a day;
give a man two rabbits, and he will
feed his family and his neighbors
and return you 64,768 rabbits in change.
- Anonymous
No one can have a higher opinion of you than I have,
and I think you're a slimy, contemptible sewer rat!
- the movie The Great Mouse Detective
When two people decide to get a divorce,
it isn't a sign that they "don't understand" one another,
but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.
- Helen Rowland
It is a truth universally acknowledged that
when one part of your life starts going okay,
another falls spectacularly to pieces.
- the movie Bridget Jones Diary
One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends
is that three out of four murders
are committed by people who know the victim.
- George Carlin
One does not leave a convivial party before closing time.
- Winston Churchill
One cannot have everything the way he would like it.
A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment,
anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.
- Mark Twain
One good Husband is worth two good Wives;
for the scarcer things are, the more they're valued.
- Benjamin Franklin
Everyone should have at least two friends -
one to talk to and one to talk about.
- Anonymous
Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry
always gets the best of the argument.
- Voltaire
One great thing about getting old is that
you can get out of all sorts of social obligations
just by saying you're too tired.
- George Carlin
You know, it takes two to get one in trouble.
- the movie She Done Him Wrong (1933)
A friend is someone who will bail you out of jail.
A best friend is the one sitting next
to you saying "boy was that fun."
- The Maugles
You're already a bastard.
Might as well be an enlightened one.
- the movie Simon Birch
Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it.
You've got everything except one thing: madness!
- the movie Zorba The Greek
You ask me if I keep a notebook
to record my great ideas.
I've only ever had one.
- Albert Einstein
The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
The rite of the rings appeals yet appalls:
a cutting, a joining, a losing, a gaining.
One becomes half, as two become one.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
A true friend is one who
overlooks your failures
and tolerates your success.
- Doug Larson
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism.
To steal from many is research.
- Anonymous
She drove me to drink.
That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for.
- the movie Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful,
natural, wholesome things that money can buy.
- Steve Martin
One should never trust a woman who tells her real age.
If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
- Oscar Wilde
When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.
- Walter Lippmann
There are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents,
and only one for birthday presents, you know.
- Lewis Carroll
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind
and proving that there is no need to do so,
almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
In life you are given two ends;
one to think with and the other to sit on.
Your success in life depends on which end you use most.
Heads you win, tails you lose.
- Conrad Burns
Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
- Terry Pratchett
Education is a method whereby
one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
- Laurence J. Peter
One should always be in love.
That is the reason one should never marry.
- Oscar Wilde
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day,
I would have studied harder.
- Pope John Paul I
One should never know too precisely
whom one has married
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The best way to appreciate your job
is to imagine yourself without one.
- Oscar Wilde
The best thing about the future is
that it comes one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln
We are all atheists about most of the gods
that societies have ever believed in.
Some of us just go one god further.
- Richard Dawkins
I begin with the principle that all men are bores.
Surely no one will prove himself
so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
- Soren Kierkegaard
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering.
"Supernatural" is a null word.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blind-folded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
My father and he had one of those English friendships
which begins by avoiding the intimacies
and eventually eliminates speech altogether.
- Jorge Luis Borges
One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide
Science is a wonderful thing
if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
- Albert Einstein
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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.