The earth was our home, she would have said, but no less was it home to the oxen that pulled our plows or the elephants that roamed in the forest and worked for us. They lived with us as partners whose well-being was inseparable from our own.

The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone.

This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.

Every angry thought makes it a little easier to get angry the next time, and a little more likely.

God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.

We have to have a purpose greater than the endless struggle to satisfy personal desires.

We look at the world through our likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, opinions and judgments. We want everyone to behave as we think they should; otherwise we get agitated. But we are here to accept the world as it is, even as we work to make it better.