Serenity Of The Mind Quotes

Into every life may come tragedy and triumph. Our goal is to meet both equally with serenity and radiant acquiescence. Yet even from the storm clouds of tragedy, rainbows can appear. ~ Aleksandra Layland

The author explores the contours of a restless mind racked with fear and doubt and questions the origins of his personal disenchantment and cynical bitterness. Do other people share similar feelings of disquiet and despair, and how does a person escape a vortex of suffering? Perchance he can marshal human beings' innate gifts of memory, language, and consciousness to transform his vile existence. Perhaps by studiously examining the self and seeking to unite all disparate parts of a fragmented psyche, he will become a thoughtful, considerate, and affectionate man who lives joyfully without pangs of pain, shame, and misgivings. The goal of this vision quest is to attain personal harmony with the world and enjoy an admirable state of attentive mindfulness after investigating and expressing all that is sayable pertaining the meaning of existence and the unique features of being human. The author aspires to discard frivolous attachments, pierce mental delusions, and attain a peaceful state of serenity by accepting reality and appreciating the incomparable beauty of this magnificent world and the little pleasures that each unfolding day affords. Perhaps writing of his struggles to transcend his own pain and develop the wisdom and serenity of the mind that comes from living an examined life might even provide a template for other people explore their own life story. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind. ~ Washington Irving

Close your eyes to feel deeply the tranquility and serenity of the mind. ~ Debasish Mridha

Seamus tossed down two of his cards. "Hell. I'd train her if Tristan asked me. Wouldn't mind seeing that pretty face every day."
I studied my cards, pretending not to hear him.
"Maybe I should offer to work with her," he said. "Free you up so you can get back to doing what you love."
My jaw tightened.
"You go kill things, and I'll show the lass some Irish moves. Win-win situation for both of us, right?"
The cards in my hand began to buckle.
"Ha!" Seamus gave Niall a victorious grin. "Pay up, bro."
Niall's mouth turned down. "You don't even like that album."
"I said it wasn't my favorite one, but you know I like all of Johnny Cash's stuff."
"Since when?"
I stared at the two brothers with a mix of irritation and confusion.
"What are you two going on about?" Chris asked.
Seamus looked at me with a smug expression. "I told Niall you had it bad for the lass. He said she was too young and sweet to interest you. We made a friendly wager, which he just lost."
"You don't have proof he's into her," Niall argued. "He just might not want your ugly mug around her."
Seamus snorted. "You do realize we're identical twins."
"I'm still better looking. ~ Karen Lynch

I'm an ensemble guy, I guess - that comes from the theater. If I ever won some kind of award someday, I imagine I'd try to be very gracious, but in the end, I just want to keep working. I don't see why that, if you just put your mind to it and keep sowing the right seeds, you can't keep doing the things you want to do. ~ Garret Dillahunt

John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains - and he withdrew his fire - until the day when men withdraw their vultures. ~ Ayn Rand

Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose - to accept defeat. To learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying! ~ Bruce Lee

Becoming aware of these habits and understanding the importance of this agreement is the first step. But understanding its importance is not enough. Information or an idea is merely the seed in your mind. What will really make the difference is action. Taking the action over and over again strengthens your will, nurtures the seed, and establishes a solid foundation for the new habit to grow. After many repetitions these new agreements will become second nature, and you will see how the magic of your word transforms you from a black magician into a white magician. A ~ Miguel Ruiz

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some - now carry my revelation with you
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world - its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself - I imagine
this is how it began. ~ Mary Oliver

There arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind. ~ Francis Bacon

The essence of meditation is to induce a mind which is totally relaxed and at the same time totally aware. If you get into a lovely, dreamy, peaceful state where you don't want to move and you feel you could just sit for hours, completely blissed out and peaceful, but in a vague fog, you have gone completely astray. ~ Ani Tenzin Palmo

He spent several days deciding on the artifacts. Much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself, and approximately the same time required to get that many reds. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way he would indict the system and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. Actually, he was not as sure in his mind what the death achieved as what the two artifacts achieved; but anyhow it all added up ... ~ Philip K. Dick

The face towels had been excellent value and just what Margaret wanted, the space gun for Robby and the rabbit for Jean were highly satisfactory, and that evening coatee was just the thing she herself needed, warm but dressy. The pullover for Hector, too ... her mind dwelt with approval on the soundness of her purchases. ~ Agatha Christie

T smells in. Let the smell of hot tarmac in the summer remind you of a meal you ate the first time you landed in a hot place, when the ground smelled like it was melting. Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once, squeezing them with lemon as you walked on a boardwalk. Let it reach your deeper interest. When you smell the sea, and remember the basket of hot fried clams, and the sound of skee-balls knocking against each other, let it help you love what food can do, which is to tie this moment to that one. Then something about the wind off the sea will have settled in your mind, and carried the fried clams and squeeze of a lemon with it. ~ Tamar Adler

If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. ~ Alice Meynell

For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god. ~ John O'Donohue

Our breath plays a very important role in our life. The breath is the connecting link between the inner world of the mind and the outer world of the body and environment. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

In France, where Franklin had lived from 1776 to 1785, he had won an extraordinary place in the public mind. The French had lionized him to the point of absurdity - or so at least his colleagues in the American mission thought. ~ Edmund Morgan

.keep the child inside you alive.. ~ Boris Kovalík

The greatest formula that can liberate, cleanse and elevate the mind is Rama-Name, the Name of Rama. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany, he would have been ranked among the great minds of our people. ~ Adolf Hitler

Instructed by history and reflection, Julian was persuaded that, if the diseases of the body may sometimes be cured by salutary violence, neither steel nor fire can eradicate the erroneous opinions of the mind. ~ Edward Gibbon

Each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this Particular planet. ~ Aldous Huxley

All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve. ~ Baruch Spinoza

Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. […] He sizes women up with a glance, with sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and determining the way he smiles at them. ~ Tennessee Williams

But. All I could focus on was that one word: Why was there always a but? My parents swore up and down that they would love me no matter what, and yet the but sent me sliding down a rabbit hole, appearing in my mind like miles of quicksand before I could get to the love they were promising. - Kate Fagan. ~ Gregory Montoya

...., who have miraculously materialised, at that very moment. Just like a thick bank of clouds, in the middle of summer, during one's lunch hour. ~ Gary Edward Gedall

Things and persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. How unconsciously we judge others by the light that is within ourselves, condemning or approving them by our own conception of right and wrong, honor and dishonor! We show by our judgment just what the light within us is. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

If the perpetrators of the World Trade Center plane crashes had a nuclear weapon, there's no doubt in my mind but that they would've detonated it in New York. ~ Ted Turner

There is the physical mind which is mechanical but the awareness which is the essential character (dharma) of the mind is also to some extent present there. ~ Sri Aurobindo

1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ~ Anonymous

Astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist, since it contains a sort of psychological experience which we call projected - this means that we find the psychological facts as it were in the constellations. This originally gave rise to the idea that these factors derive from the stars, whereas they are merely in a relation of synchronicity with them. I admit that this is a very curious fact which throws a peculiar light on the structure of the human mind. ~ Carl Jung

It was clearly the Native American curse on the white man in action. After taking their land and converting everything that was holy and good into money, the white man became aged and foolish and then gambled all that money away at Native American casinos. The power of this magic was indisputable and in evidence all around me. Senior citizens chain smoked and dumped money into the machines, staring with eyes that only reacted to the prospect of making a buck from risk and self-destruction. Especially if this were enhanced by the notion of a fate that had their interests in mind in a way loosely connected to their Christian God who usually took their side in racial relations, if history were to be a judge. ~ Carl-John X. Veraja

When you find yourself dwelling on something negative, consciously use your willpower to remove your mind from that which is negative. Move your mind into the flow of something positive. ~ Frederick Lenz

Regimented minds cannot grasp the concept of confrontation as an open exchange of major differences with a view to settlement through genuine dialogue. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi