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Zen Koan Quotes and Sayings
Quotes by Zen Koan

I hope you like these Zen Koan quotes from my collection of quotes about life.

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

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

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson PHOTO

 

The book of life is filled with incoherent riddles.
Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie PHOTO

Play with life, laugh with life,
dance lightly with life,
and smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie PHOTO

I do not need anyone's permission to be my true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie PHOTO

This above all, to thine own self be true.
- William Shakespeare PHOTO

If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
- Yiddish proverb

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
- Oscar Wilde PHOTO

You do not need anyone's permission to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie PHOTO

A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer PHOTO

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci PHOTO

All our dreams can come true,
if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney PHOTO

Honor True Self
Forgive with Compassion
Receive ALL of life with Thanksgiving
CHOOSE with Thoughtful Consideration
Dream with Powerful Vision
Act with Bold Courage
Dance with a Light Heart
Relax in the Arms of Spirit
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

People are like stained glass windows,
they sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when darkness sets in their true beauty
is revealed only if there is a light from within.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

To thine own self be true.
- William Shakespeare

There are trivial truths and there are great truths.
The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false.
The opposite of a great truth is also true.
- Niels Bohr

The key to happiness is having dreams.
The key to success is making your dreams come true.
- Anonymous

Only one who devotes himself to a cause
with his whole strength and soul
can be a true master.
For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
- Albert Einstein

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

True happiness... is not attained
through self-gratification,
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller

True love is a process of co-creation
in which neither feels ownership or superiority.
Jealousy is a highly destructive force
for love and relationships.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

True wisdom cannot be learned in a lifetime,
but can be revealed in a moment,
for it has always lived within each and every one of us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Be true to thyself.
- William Shakespeare
(paraphrase of Shakespeare's famous quote)

Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard

'Tis strange - but true;
for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
- Lord Byron

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
- Henry David Thoreau

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates

True love has no limits.
- Anonymous

Only good comes from being honest and true.
Only harm and suffering come from falsehood.
It doesn't always feel as if good comes from truth and honesty,
but, in the long run, it does.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -
broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false,
and lofty things from low.
- Helen Keller

You are never given a wish without also
being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
- Richard Bach

Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.
- Lao Tzu

Nobody needs your help.
I know, I know, this is a difficult one. But it is true.
This does not mean no one wants your help,
or that no one could use your help.
It simply means the thought that another
Aspect of Divinity is powerless without you is inaccurate.
- Neale Donald Walsch

We censor our actions, but
our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"To know" is to know that you know nothing.
That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Confucius

Everything deep is also simple
and can be reproduced simply
as long as its reference
to the whole truth is maintained.
But what matters is not what is witty
but what is true.
- Albert Schweitzer

Seek always to do some good, somewhere.
Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.
You must give some time to your fellow man.
For remember, you don't live in a world all your own.
Your brothers are here too.
- Albert Schweitzer

Know that you do not need anyone's permission
to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I Honor My True Self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true
were really true, there would be little hope of advance.
- Orville Wright

The true delight is in the finding out,
rather than in the knowing.
- Isaac Asimov

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced,
and today we think this more than ever, and are just as wrong
as all previous ages that thought so.
How often have we not seen the truth condemned!
It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung

It costs you nothing to make another happy -
and you gain your true self through the act of spreading joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Mastering others is strength.
Mastering yourself is true power.
- Lao Tzu

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.
I am not bound to succeed,
but I am bound to live by the light that I have.
I must stand with anybody that stands right,
and stand with him while he is right,
and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west;
people create distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true.
- The Buddha

Loving, hating, having expectations:
all these are attachments.
Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.
- Lao Tzu

The true sign of intelligence
is not knowledge but imagination.
- Albert Einstein

The secret of making dreams come true
can be summarized in four C's.
They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy;
and the greatest of these is Confidence.
- Walt Disney

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

It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends.
But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy
is the quintessence of true religion.
The other is mere business.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Women are like teabags.
We don't know our true strength
until we are in hot water!
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Only those who have learned the power
of sincere and selfless contribution
experience life's deepest joy: true fulfillment.
- Tony Robbins

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
- Socrates

Our actions are constrained by fear of reprisal,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common.
Celebrate it every day.
- Anonymous

Lighten up! Slow down the shopping.
Your greatest gift to your family and friends is yourself -
your relaxed, happy, and fully-present self.
Consider gifting hand-made cards with messages
of true appreciation in place of store-bought presents.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A true "moral compass" never points toward discrimination.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin -
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Know that the true essence of the Golden Rule
is always being compassionate, kind,
generous, and being in service to others.
Compelling others to behave as you wish
them to behave in the name of the
Golden Rule is a corruption of a sacred principle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

Many persons have a wrong idea of
what constitutes true happiness.
It is not attained through self-gratification
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller

I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)


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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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