“The family is society in embryo; it is the native soil… so that within a small circle a basis of moral practice is created, and this is later widened to include human relationships in general.”

— Fu Xi 伏羲 1 via Richard Wilhelm, Hexagram 37
Emperor/shaman progenitor of civilization symbol
from I Ching

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“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

— Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

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“Trust in self interest, spread one’s awesomeness over the enemy... Victory can be known. It cannot be made… And so the superior military cuts down strategy. Its inferior cuts down alliances. Its inferior cuts down the military. The worst attacks walled cities.”

— Sun Tzu 孙武 544 – 496 BCE via Denma Translation Group
(Sun Zi)
HIstory's supreme strategist
from Art of War 孙子兵法

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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

— Socrates 469 – 399 BCE
One of the most powerful influences on Western Civilization

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“The reality of the Tao lies in concern for the self. Concern for the state is irrelevant, and concern for the world is cowshit. From this standpoint, the emperor’s work is the sage’s hobby and is not what develops the self or nourishes life.”

— Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

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“We cultivate the Tao in the world by letting things change without giving orders Lao-tzu asks how we know that those who cultivate the Tao prosper and those who ignore the Tao perish. We know by comparing those who don’t cultivate the Tao with those who do.”

— Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

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“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

— Anonymous 1 via anonymous Greek proverb​
Freedom from the narrow boxes defined by personal history

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“Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, when If it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?”

— Horace 65 – 8 BCE

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“It is called, ‘consummation of incomparable enlightenment.’ attained by freedom from separate personal selfhood and by cultivating all kinds of goodness… though there is no goodness; such is merely a name.”

— Nagarjuna नागर्जुन 1

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“When someone uses laws to restrict the world, might to compel it, knowledge to silence it, and majesty to impress it, there are always those who don’t follow. When someone rules by means of the Tao, the world follows without thinking.”

— Cao Daochong 道寵 1
(​Daochong or Ts’ao Tao-Ch’ung)
from Lao-tzu-chu, Red Pine Translation

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“First improve yourself, then reach out to others and to later generations bequeath the noble, pure, and kindly Tao. Thus blessings reach your descendants, virtue grows, beauty lasts, and worship never ends.”

— Cao Daochong 道寵 1
(​Daochong or Ts’ao Tao-Ch’ung)
from Lao-tzu-chu, Red Pine Translation

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“When the stains from old habits are exhausted the original light appears, blazing through your skull, not admitting any other matters. Vast and spacious, like sky and water merging during autumn, like snow and moon having the same color, this field is without boundary, beyond direction, magnificently one entity without edge or seam.”

— Hóngzhì Zhēngjué 宏智正覺 1091 – 1157 CE
(Shōgaku)

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“Humankind is called to co-create. With nature’s help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life-sustaining.”

— Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 1179 CE

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“Just as a circle embraces all that is within it, so does the God-head embrace all. No one has the power to divide this circle, to surpass it, or to limit it.”

— Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 1179 CE

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“Those who plant something well, plant it without planting. Thus it is never uprooted. Those who hold something well, hold it without holding. Thus it is never taken away.”

— Wu Cheng 吴澄 1249 – 1333 CE via Red Pine
"Mr. Grass Hut"
from Tao-te-chen-ching-chu

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“We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.”

— Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328 CE
(Eckhart von Hochheim)

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“And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.”

— John Donne 1572 – 1631 CE
from Songs and Sonnets

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“Things are done quickly enough if done well. If just quickly done, they can be quickly undone.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE

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“All good activity in life depends on discretion, the highest virtue — that natural tendency toward the most rational and sure actions.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Shan Dao, #96
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

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“I never doubted… that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. These I esteem’d the essentials of every religion.”

— Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790 CE
from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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“Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere.”

— Novalis 1772 – 1831 CE

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“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE

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“Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.”

— Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941 CE

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“There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which... is within the souls of men.”

— Black Elk 1863 – 1950 CE
(Heȟáka Sápa)

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“The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.”

— G. I. Gurdjieff 1866 – 1949 CE

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“The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself. With that very simple view… a new light – inexhaustibly harmonious – bursts upon the world, radiating from ourselves.”

— Teilhard de Chardin 1881 – 1955 CE via Bernard Wall
from Phenomenon of Man

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“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

— Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

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“Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE
from Report to Greco

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“The truth is that we all are one, that all of us together create god, that god is not man's ancestor, but his descendant.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE
from Last Temptation of Christ

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“All women are not Helen but have Helen in their hearts.”

— William Carlos Williams 1883 – 1963 CE

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“God is a verb.”

— Buckminster Fuller 1895 – 1983 CE

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“Instead of only criticizing your culture, you should devote your mind and body to practicing this simple way. Then society and culture will grow out of you.”

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

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“My ultimate dream is to sow seeds in the desert. To revegetate the deserts is to sow seed in people's hearts.”

— Masanobu Fukuoka 福岡 正信 1913 – 2008 CE
from One Straw Revolution

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“We always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground.”

— Oren Lyons 1930 CE –

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“If you do not start at home, you have no hope of helping the world… the first step is learning to rule your household, your immediate world…. If you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you don't, then your contribution to this world will only be further chaos.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

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