Quotes from George Leonard

For the atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest of clay. The life of every woman or man - the heart of it - is pure and holy joy.

Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity. Once again, there is only the dance.

What if you're practicing wrong? Then you get very good at doing something wrong.

Ultimately, human intentionality is the most powerful evolutionary force on this planet.

At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself, there is music and rhythm.

Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.

The real juice of life, whether it be sweet or bitter, is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our efforts as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive.

At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time, Before we make music, music makes us.

To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.

Competition is the spice of sports but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.

The human individual is equipped to learn and go on learning prodigiously from birth to death, and this is precisely what sets him or her apart from all other known forms of life.

Go for efficiency, elegance, and grace in your motions; avoid hasty shortcuts. Rather than thinking about getting the job finished and going on to something else, stay wholly focused on the moment, on the task at hand. Above all, don't hurry. You might discover that by not hurrying you'll finish the dishes sooner than would ordinarily be the case.

Intentionality. To cultivate a positive attitude is to take a large step on the path of mastery in relationships. In addition, mental toughness (the ability to focus on a problem or a long-term goal) combined with openness and imagination (the ability to see options and visualize desired states) can be applied to relationships as well as to sports, or anything else.

What a miracle it is, this gift of time! Little marks on paper, the children of consciousness, sent down to us through the years.

Mastery applies to nations as well as to individuals. Our present national prosperity is built on a huge deficit and trillions of dollars worth of overdue expenditures on environmental cleanup, infrastructure repair, education, and social services—the quick-fix mentality.

At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, made up of wave forms and resonances, which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe. The act of getting in touch with this pulse can transform our personal experience and in some way alter the world around us.

At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path.

A black belt is only one more step along an endless path, a license to go on learning for as long as you live.

Why does learning take place in spurts? Why can't we make steady upward progress on our way toward mastery? As we saw in the case of tennis, we have to keep practicing an unfamiliar movement again and again until we "get it in the muscle memory" or "program it into the autopilot.

How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges.

you can use that energy to deal with your current situation, maybe with plenty left over. Breathe deeply. Let the feeling of arousal and clarity, triggered by the release of adrenaline into your bloodstream

If you study calligraphy, you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art, and in life." The best horse, according to Suzuki, may be the worst horse. And the worst horse can be the best, for if it perseveres, it will have learned whatever it is practicing all the way to the marrow of its bones.

But the real juice of life, whether it be sweet or bitter, is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our efforts as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive.

But recognition is often unsatisfying and fame is like sea-water for the thirsty. Love of your work, willingness to stay with it even in the absence of extrinsic reward, is good food and good drink.