The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought.

When we are at home with ourselves, we are at home everywhere in the world. When we have found peace within ourselves, peace and love follow us wherever we go.

When someone at peace and free from hurry enters a room, that person has a calming effect on everyone present.

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.

When we meditate every morning we are putting on armor for the day's battle against our own impatience, inadequacy, resentment, and hostility.

There is a close relationship between a house full of possessions and a heart full of desires, between a cluttered closet and a crowded schedule, between having no place to put possessions and having no priorities for our life. These are precious clues. They remind us to slow down, to live in the present, to reduce the desires that drain our vitality, to clarify priorities so we can give our time and attention to what matters most. Tragically, in the press of modern life, we have managed to get backwards one of life's most vital truths: people are to be loved; things are to be used.

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