I occasionally put quotes here when I run across a good one and remember to do so. I find that quotes are often little kernels of zen-like wisdom. Sometimes, I am hit by an understanding or a feeling...that such things could be communicated by so few words often gives me a moment's thought. Such simplicity!

Reader Beware - NYT article on the accuracy of quotation attribution.

General

Before you speak, think--Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind? Will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?
- Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
- Philip K. Dick

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
- Anais Nin

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
- Joseph Campbell

The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.
- William Wordsworth

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.
- William Wordsworth

I have been impressed by the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
- Leonardo da Vinci

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have-for their usefulness.
- Thomas Merton

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
- Bertrand Russell

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
- Kierkegaard

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
- Henry James

Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.
- Eugene O'Neill

He who binds to himself a joy
doth the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
lives in Eternity's sunrise.
- William Blake

We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To each thing its own true deepest inner nature; water does not think of itself as the consort of the bright moonlight it hosts.
- Sogi

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr. Suess

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Tiellhard de Chardin

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all art and science. So to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein

Art

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
- Martha Graham, dancer

Beware of artists - they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous...
- Queen Victoria

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.
- Wassily Kandinsky

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
- Pablo Picasso

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
- Francis Bacon

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
- Ambrose Bierce

Love

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
- Marc Chagall

Nobody sees a flower--really. It is so small, we haven't time, and to see takes time. Like to have a friend takes time.
- Georgia O'Keeffe

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
- Iris Murdoch

For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof; the work for which all other work is but preparation.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
- Oscar Wilde

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
- Thomas Merton

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you would be loved, love and be lovable.
- Benjamin Franklin

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
- Betrand Russell

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life: That word is love.
- Sophocles

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.
- Anais Nin