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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
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
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer
If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong
Habit is habit,
and not to be flung out of the window by any man,
but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain
Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?
- Luciano Pavarotti
There comes a time in every man's education
when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance,
that imitation is suicide,
that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb
The man form is higher than the angel form;
of all forms it is the highest.
Man is the highest being in creation,
because he aspires to freedom.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer
Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu
A man too busy to take care of his health is like
a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
- Spanish Proverb
Each man is the architect of his own fate.
- Appius Claudius
Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche
Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man,
but if you're up there and you can hear me ...
show me the way... show me the way.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)
Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
All religions must be tolerated...
for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
- Epictetus
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau
You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Property is intended to serve life,
and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect,
it has no personal being.
It is part of the earth man walks on.
It is not man.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.
- the movie Braveheart
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you'd like to win, but think you can't
It's almost a cinch you won't.
Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man;
But soon or late the man who wins is the one who thinks he can.
- Anonymous
If you talk to a man in a language he understands,
that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his language,
that goes to his heart.
- Nelson Mandela
Non-violence requires a double faith,
faith in God and also faith in man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson
As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction
devised by the ingenuity of man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
- Oscar Wilde
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable
who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
- Joseph Addison
Every man must decide whether he will
walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus
A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.
- Seneca
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions;
it is easy in solitude to live after your own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
- Anatole France
Every man has his own courage,
and is betrayed because he seeks in himself
the courage of other persons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe,
that lures him to evil ways.
- The Buddha
It is impossible for a man to conceal himself.
In every act, word or gesture,
he stands revealed as he is,
and not as he would have himself appear to be.
From the Universe, nothing is or can be hidden.
- Ernest Holmes
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates
A man is but the product of his thoughts -
what he thinks, he becomes.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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