To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Without approval and without scorn, but carefully studying the sentences word by word, one should trace them in the Discourses and verify them by the Discipline. If they are neither traceable in the Discourses nor verifiable by the Discipline, one must conclude thus: 'Certainly, this is not the Blessed One's utterance; this has been misunderstood by that bhikkhu - or by that community, or by those elders, or by that elder.' In that way, bhikkhus, you should reject it.

Men give up one thing to take up another, but in spite of numerous changes they do not find peace. They are no better than monkeys who let go one bough to take hold of another, only to let it go again.

If you are tossed about by doubts, full of strong thoughtless passions, and yearning only for that which is detrimental, your thirst will grow stronger and stronger, unquenched, and your pain will grow with your defilements.

Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation.

Until he has unconditional and unbiased love for all beings, man will not find peace.

Comparing oneself to others in such terms as "Just as I am so are they, just as they are so am I," he should neither kill nor cause others to kill.