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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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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
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
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
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits
and then complain that he's not the man she married?
- Barbra Streisand
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
- W. C. Fields
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman -
before marriage and after marriage.
- Anonymous
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
Getting divorced just because you don't love a man
is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Men always want to be a woman's first love -
women like to be a man's last romance.
- Oscar Wilde
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
It's not as great a day for the bride as she thinks.
She's not marrying the best man.
- Anonymous
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
- Groucho Marx
One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence.
- Ogden Nash
Afraid? Me? A man who's licked
his weight in wild caterpillars?
Afraid? You bet I'm afraid!
- Groucho Marx
No man is truly married until he understands
every word his wife is NOT saying.
- Anonymous
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles,
the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
- Everett Dirksen
You never really know a man until you have divorced him.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50,
and a fool if he doesn't afterward.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
A man's friendships are, like his will,
invalidated by marriage -
but they are also no less invalidated
by the marriage of his friends.
- Samuel Butler
Barf: I'm a mog: half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!
- the movie Spaceballs (1987)
He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
- Mae West
Whenever I date a guy, I think,
"Is this the man I want my children
to spend their weekends with?"
- Rita Rudner
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
- Robert A. Heinlein
You can lead a man to Congress,
but you can't make him think.
- Milton Berle
A man likes his wife to be
just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness,
and just stupid enough to admire it.
- Israel Zangwill
Marriages don't last. When I meet a guy,
the first question I ask myself is:
is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
- Rita Rudner
A man is incomplete until he is married.
After that, he is finished.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Do not marry a man to reform him.
That is what reform schools are for.
- Mae West
Don't marry a man to reform him -
that's what reform schools are for.
- Mae West
I care not much for a man's religion
whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
- Abraham Lincoln
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
Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you.
- Carl Jung
Clothes make the man.
Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain
The way for a young man to rise is
to improve himself in every way he can,
never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
- Abraham Lincoln
Never stir up litigation.
A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this.
- Abraham Lincoln
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
Every man thinks God is on his side.
- Jean Anouilh
It appears to be a law that you cannot have
a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
- Henry David Thoreau
I don't advise a haircut, man.
All hairdressers are in the employment of the government.
Hairs are your aerials.
They pick up signals from the cosmos,
and transmit them directly into the brain.
This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.
- the movie Withnail & I
The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway
is usually a poor judge of distance.
- Laurence J. Peter
The man who does not read good books
has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
- Mark Twain
Confused Memories of Childhood:
Hate to my father, cruel hate,
confused with love - a mix not great.
The man I love - the man I hate;
the man I want to emulate.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I know that God made the whole world in 4004 BC.
I know because my preacher told me. He's a good man.
He's even saving up all the money we give him
to go to bible college someday.
- Anonymous Humor
A clever man commits no minor blunders.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You can always tell when a man's well informed.
His views are pretty much like your own.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
You know your god is man-made when he
hates all the same people you do.
- Anonymous
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering.
"Supernatural" is a null word.
- Robert A. Heinlein
A conservative is a man who is
too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
- Elbert Hubbard
Morality which depends upon the helplessness
of a man or woman has not much to recommend it.
Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The man who can smile when things go wrong
has thought of someone else he can blame it on.
- Robert Bloch
If you can not answer a man's argument,
all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.
- Elbert Hubbard
Man tends to treat all of his opinions as principles.
- Herbert Sebastian Agar
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
- Winston Churchill
A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself,
to keep his friends in countenance.
- Benjamin Franklin
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say,
abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
- George Eliot
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
- Albert Einstein
The civilized man has built a coach,
but has lost the use of his feet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man's nature is not essentially evil.
Brute nature has been known to
yield to the influence of love.
You must never despair of human nature.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
- Abraham Lincoln
An excellent man;
he has no enemies;
and none of his friends like him.
- Oscar Wilde
We are born believing.
A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something;
in the absence of good grounds for belief,
he will be satisfied with bad ones.
- Bertrand Russell
Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.
- Margaret Mead
It is sad but unfortunately true that
man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung
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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.