Nature--the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful--offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. --Richard Louv (in Last Child in the Woods)

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you? --Walt Whitman (in I Am One of Everybody)

The boundary between us and the rest of the world is so fluid. So I think of myself as a song the universe is singing. --Rebecca Henderson (in Climate in the Boardroom)

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd. I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. --Walt Whitman (in Thomas Merton and the Language of Life)

This is the greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: You take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans. --Brian Swimme (in An Evolutionary Transition is Coming-- Are You Ready?)

Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition. --Sharon Salzberg (in Shelter for the Heart and Mind)

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. --Susan Sontag (in Life in the Time of Cholera: Lessons on a Pandemic)

If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with him -- the people who give you their food give you their heart. --Cesar Chavez (in How to Build a More Inclusive Dinner Table)

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry -- all forms of fear -- are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. --Eckhart Tolle (in 8 Questions to Help Navigate Election Stress)

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. --Jose Saramago (in Gabriel Meyer: Stretching Identity)

For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime.

--Bruce Lee (in Bruce Lee's Never-Before-Seen Affirmations)

Love is the bridge between you and everything. --Rumi (in The View From Here)

If we surrendered to earth's intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees. --Rainer Maria Rilke (in Stories to Tend the Soul of the World)

The subtle source is clear and bright, the tributary streams run through the darkness.
--Shitou Xiqian (in Judith Blackstone on Trauma & The Unbound Body)

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss, but that it is too low and we reach it. --Michaelangelo (in Rethinking the Bucket List)

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color. --Maya Angelou (in Crochet Jam: Radical Social Justice Through Folk Art Traditions)

To share such a moment of deep tranquility with another being, especially one as different from us as the octopus, is a humbling privilege. --Sy Montgomery (in Why We Should Take World Octopus Day Seriously)

Simply by changing your own behavior, you gain at least some influence over the problem. --Douglas Stone (in Difficult Conversations: The Art and Science of Working Together)

We've replaced what we thought of as superstition with a new superstition, which is the myth of progress. --Peter Kalmus (in Peter Kalmus: The Question of Progress)

The persecution of any minority is inhuman and unnatural. That belief is timeless and beyond change. --Charlie Chaplin (in Charlie Chaplin: Let Us Free The World)

Listen with a heart, but answer with a soul. --Oscar Auliq-Ice (in Is Philanthropy Really Changing Anything?)

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. --Gaston Bachelard (in Deo Niyizonkiza: Healing What Remains)

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. --Pema Chodron (in Embracing Groundlessness)

Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile. --James Turrell (in An Unknown World: Notes on the Meaning of the Earth)

Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. --Pema Chodron (in Meeting Our Pain With Compassion)

There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity. --Shunryu Suzuki (in Zen TV)

There is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak. --Antoine de Saint-Exupery (in The Dugnad in Our DNA)

I must go there today --
Tomorrow the plum blossoms
Will scatter. --Ryokan (in Trail of Light)

The future is not out there in front of us, but inside us.
--Joanna Macy (in Joanna Macy: Entering the Bardo)

Democracy is hard; demagoguery is easy. --Patricia Roberts-Miller (in Is There A Better Way to Have An Argument?)

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction. --Rachel Carson (in Visiting Rachel: 50 Years After Silent Spring)

Spiritual tradition is comfortable with paradox, whereas many political movements are not. But all truth is paradox. What it is to live in a space of transformative change is to engender greater and greater comfort with paradox. --Rev. angel Kyodo williams (in The World is Our Field of Practice)

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut you more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few humans and even divine ingredients can. --Hafiz (in How to Be at Home)

The human heart is the first home of democracy --Terry Tempest Williams (in Healing the Heart of Democracy)

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. --Alan Watts (in Kiran Khalap: Navigating Business, Creativity and Spirituality)

We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People. --From the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address (in Forming a More Perfect Union Through Indigenous Values)

An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances --Arlie Hochschild (in Crossing the Empathy Wall in Divided Times)

To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves. --Carrie Chapman Catt (in What Women's Suffrage Owes to Indigenous Culture)

We cannot create compartments in life -- political, economic, social, environmental. Whatever we do or don't do affects and touches the wholeness, the homogeneity. We are forever organically related to wholeness. --Vimala Thakar (in Spirituality and Social Action: A Holistic Approach)

We need to find our way back to love, and the forgotten garden of the soul reconnects us to love--this is a part of its mystery, its magic. --Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (in When the Source Ran Free: A Story for Our Times)

The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. --Shel Silverstein (in Mark and Doug: The Power of Friendship)

When you use a living medicine and get well, you feel that the world is alive and aware and wants to help you. People often talk about saving the Earth, but how many times have you experienced the Earth saving you? --Stephen Harrod Buhner (in Living Medicine: On Plant Intelligence and Natural Healing)

Your openness is more powerful than the feelings you're opening to. --John Welwood (in Unconditional Presence: Letting Yourself Have Your Experience)

Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again. --William Cullen Bryant (in Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community)

When nothing is sure, everything is possible. --Margaret Drabble (in The Big Bang of Equity + Systems Change)

More recently there has been a recognition of the importance of craft and design, and a desire to see evidence of the human hand, even in digitally produced things. --Alison McIntyre (in Barbara Kingsolver on Knitting as Creation Story)

What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. --Paul Hawken (in We Can Do This: A Conversation with Paul Hawken)

I very strongly feel I'm here for a reason. And I'm trying to live up to what I believe I'm supposed to be doing. --Jane Goodall (in The Shadow of Humanity and the Spirit of Animals)

To anyone out there who's hurting -- it's not a sign of weakness to ask for help. It's a sign of strength. --Barack Obama (in Active Minds: Creating Hope Out of Tragedy)

Anxiety is an emotion; it's not a disease. It's an essential part of your intelligence, and it brings you unique skills that are irreplaceable. --Karla McLaren (in Welcoming the Gifts of Anxiety)