“To start from nowhere and follow no road is the first step.”

— Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE via Thomas Merton
(Zhuangzi)

from Zhuangzi

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“The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?”

— Koheleth 1
from Ecclesiastes קֹהֶלֶת‎

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“Whenever the mouth opens and the tongue moves, disaster is close behind.”

— Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

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“I shall kill the fleeing deer of this and that, On the mountain of the body believing in an I.”

— Tilopa 988 – 1069 CE

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“Responding with what fits.”

— Wang Pang 1044 – 1076 CE via Red Pine

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“When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”

— Rumi مولانا جلال‌الدین محمد بلخی 1207 – 1283 CE
(Rumi Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī)
from Masnavi مثنوي معنوي‎‎) "Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning”

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“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”

— Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328 CE
(Eckhart von Hochheim)

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“Avoid the faults of your nation… There is not a nation among even the most civilized that has not some fault peculiar to itself…It is a triumph to correct in oneself such failings… There are also family failings as well as faults of position, of office, or of age.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

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“There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one. Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words, the less litigation.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE

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“The world has always been the same — an endless farce, an antic game, a universal masquerade!”

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE
from Faust, part II

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“You can't prevent time passing. When something has passed, why do thoughts still loiter?”

— Ryokan 良寛大愚 1758 – 1758 CE
(Ryōkan Taigu,“The Great Fool”)

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“The universe... is always emptying, always full; the more it yields, the more it holds.”

— Witter Bynner 1881 – 1968 CE
(Emanuel Morgan)

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“A peak in a poke and a pig in a pew.”

— James Joyce 1882 – 1941 CE
from Finnegan's Wake

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“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”

— Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

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“You can only be kind or cruel if you have, and cherish, a self… Altruism is the other side of egoism.”

— Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

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“‘That’ has a name but ‘this’ doesn’t have a name.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Illusion's Game

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“A tragedy is a comedy misunderstood. Once you realize what you are, there's nothing but gratitude and laughter.”

— Stephen Mitchell 1943 CE –
from Second Book of Tao

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“The difference between reading a love poem and being in love.”

— David Mitchell 1969 CE –
from Bone Clocks

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