Quotes About Mindfulness

It is possible, as I have learned again and again, to be in one's place, in such company, wild or domestic, and with such pleasure, that one cannot think of another place that one would prefer to be—or of another place at all. One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough. Such times give one the chief standard and the chief reason for one's work.

He nearly always seems steady, reined pretty tight. But it's no trouble to look at him now and see that it has been a long time since he has been at rest in himself.

CONCERNED AS HE is that the usable be put to use, that there be no waste, still there is nothing utilitarian or mechanistic about Mr. Lapp's farm—or his mind. His aim, it seems, is not that the place should be put to the fullest use, but that it should have the most abundant life.

He has come into a wakefulness as quiet as sleep.

One of the best things you can do in this world is take a nap in the woods.

Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen.

But the safe competence of human work extends no further, ever, than our ability to think and love at the same time.

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

our great modern error is the belief that we must invariably give up one thing in order to have another. But it is possible, for instance, to find comfort, pleasure, and beauty in food, clothing, and shelter. It is possible to find pleasure and beauty and even recreation in work. It is possible to have farms that do not waste and poison the natural world.

Therefore, be patient. Such pleasure as there is, is here, now. Take pleasure as it comes. Take work as it comes. The end may never come, or when it does it may be the wrong end.

All friends and comfortable with each other have ceased to talk, each occupied in that wide quiet with his own thoughts.

a place where thought can take its shape as quietly in the mind as water in a pitcher...

A spring wind blowing the smell of the ground through the intersections of traffic, the mind turns, seeks a new nativity- another place, simpler, less weighted by what has already been.

He has to reach down with his feet to tread the floor.

Theoretically, there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have. But then this person must meet herself coming back: Theoretically, there always is a better inhabitant of this place, a better member of this community, a better worker, spouse, and friend than she is. This surely describes one of the circles of Hell, and who hasn't traveled around it a time or two?

We were created to be fully human - a lifetime effort - and using our minds intelligently and reverently is essential to full humanhood. But Rushdie talks throughout of making something sacred, whereas there is another kind of sacrality that exists of its own right.

Although we cannot command it, we choose joy, making a deliberate commitment to happiness (essentially another word for peace).

It you want to be somebody, If you want to go some where, you've got to wake up and pay attention

But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders' stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it must think of, and your hands something that they must do.

To his alert mind and ears, every experience was education.

Of what are you thinking?" Peary asked one of his Eskimo guides. "I do not have to think," was the answer; "I have plenty of meat." Not to think unless we have to—there is much to be said for this as the summation of wisdom.

Seek not to have things happen as you choose them, but rather choose that they should happen as they do; and you shall live prosperously.

Sometimes," said Thoreau, "as I drift idly on Walden Pond, I cease to live and begin to be.

The secret of peace is not to make our achievements equal to our desires, but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements. "If what you have seems insufficient to you," said the Roman Stoic Seneca (d. 65 A.D.), "then, though you possess the world, you will yet be miserable.