Martha Beck Quotes - Page 8

I'd like to help repair the earth's ecosystems, and to fully live until I'm fully dead.

Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to be what we’re not, feeling lousy about ourselves when we fail, and sometimes when we succeed. We hide our differences when, by accepting and celebrating them, we could collaborate to make every effort more exciting, productive enjoyable, and powerful. Personally, I think we should start right now.

Most people think that once they've found their purpose and the power to practice it, they'll finally be at peace. Actually, though, it's only by starting in a place of peace that we find our purpose and power. Peace is the first step and the final lesson we all need to learn.

The power to bring me out of solitude - or to push me back into it - had never belonged to another person. It was mine and only mine.

No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone.

If you're feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can.

My deep belief is that all of us have the same lifelong work: to learn honesty, courage, and love. To learn, in other words, how to be our best selves.

The shortness of life, which we all discuss, but which is very clear to me at the moment, makes keeping and spreading a joyful peace more crucial than ever before. Let us keep our minds on what matters, which is our work, which is astonishment and gratitude. From this quiet magic comes a power for all other new years wishes to come true.

Constantly measuring ourselves against others sours and shortens our lives, robbing us of the very things we think it will bring: prosperity, love, inner peace, the knowledge that we’re good enough.

I practice staying calm all the time, beginning with situations that aren't tense.

Recurrent floods of sadness and anger gradually wash away the rubble of the defunct relationship, leaving only the bits of treasure: the remembered moments of real communion, a new understanding of your own mistakes, a clear picture of the dysfunctions you will never tolerate again.

Every instance of heartbreak can teach us powerful lessons about creating the kind of love we really want.

There are things that can only happen through you when you are still. Silence is often the most important work you can do.

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

You do not owe anyone your time. When you realize that, others will respect your time much more.

In the pursuit of Knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The moment we begin tolerating meanness, in ourselves and others, we are using our authorial power in the service of wrongdoing. We have both the capacity and the obligation to do better.

It seems to me at this moment that laughing is a serious thing, that it connects us with truth and love and God.

Heading towards that inner home will take you places-both inside yourself and in the external world-which your heart will recognize as its native environment, even though you have never been there before.

The holy days are the best times to focus on real enthusiasm, the inner source that lightens and sanctifies our lives all year.

I once read that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past...but forgiving is not the same as obliterating memory.

What laughter is to childhood, sex is to adolescence.

To make an activity joyful, keep adding things until the activity as a whole becomes more appealing than repulsing.

If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.

Every aspect of your life, whether it's a task or relationship, personal or professional, will be based on love and joy. And when you get right down to it, nothing else really matters.