Stephen Mitchell Quotes

It is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do an others; when you do your duty, you are naturally free from sin.

So actions themselves are not good and not bad; only the intention is important.

Children understand that 'once upon a time' refers not only
not even primarily
to the past, but to the impalpable regions of the present, the deeper places inside us where princes and dragons, wizards and talking birds, impassable roads, impossible tasks, and happy endings have always existed, alive and bursting with psychic power.

Even the purest of teachers will face bitter criticism from those who feel threatened by him.

What may appear to be proud ungrateful and headstrong fron the outside may from the inside express an unshakable integrity of character. Pride, if it doesn't step over the line into arrogance, is simply an unprejudiced self-esteem. Ingratitude is the appropriate response to a kindness that has hooks on it. Headstrong is another word for trusting your own heart.

Education is no longer thought of as a preparation for adult life, but as a continuing process of growth and development from birth until death.

I am speechless: what can I answer?
I put hand on my mouth.
I have said too much already;
now I will speak no more.

In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes. They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same.

They say you can fool some of the people all of the time. Accordingly, I think we should concentrate on this group initially. We can move on to the people you can only fool some of the time at a later date if we deem it necessary.

The change of language is a change in reality.

When there's no way out, you just follow the way in front of you.

Wishes are like magnifying glasses they enlarge and focus an intention that is already inside us.

But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance.

Love softens everything except our sense of integrity.

[Jesus] teaches that just as the sun gives light to both wicked and good, and the rain brings nourishment to righteous and unrighteous, God's compassion embraces all people. There are no pre-conditions for it, nothing we need to do first, nothing we have to believe. When we are ready to receive it, it is already there. And the more we live in its presence, the more effortlessly if flows through us, until we find that we no longer need external rules or Bibles or Messiahs.

Whatever thought grips the mind at the time of death is the one which will propel it and decide for it the nature of its future birth. Thus if one wants to attain god after death, one has to think of him steadfastly ... This is not as simple as it sounds, for at the time of death the mind automatically flies to the thought of an object (i.e. money, love) which has possessed it during its sojourn in the world. Thus one must think of god constantly.

...so profound an insight into God that for a century and a half he was branded a dangerous atheist...

There are two kinds of women: those who marry princes and those who marry frogs. The frogs never become princes, but it is an acknowledged fact that a prince may very well, in the course of an ordinary marrige, gradually, at first almost imperceptibly, turn into a frog. Happy the woman who after twenty-five years still wakes up beside the prince she fell in love with.

What people love about life is its miraculous beauty; what they hate about death is the loss and decay around it. Yet losing is not losing, and decay turns into beauty, as beauty turns back into decay. We are breathed in, breathed out. Therefore all you need is to understand the one breath that makes up the world.

Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live.

The audience will remember what it didn't expect to see.

When he makes you a promise, he is assuring you that however the world changes, his word will not change. Thus, he is creating the future inside the present. Even more: he is creating the present inside the present. He is establishing on stationary point amid the infinite flux of events.

Hmm,' said the King. 'I must write that down in my book of aphorisms. I don't know if it is deep, but it sounds deep.

When speech comes from a quiet heart, it has the strength of the orchid, and the fragrance of rock.

Creativity, not normality, has become the paradigm of mental health.

Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.