“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”

— Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth

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“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”

— Euripides 480 – 406 BCE
Ancient humanitarian influence continuing today

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“Live unobtrusively.”

— Epicurus ɛpɪˈkjɔːrəs 341 – 270 BCE
Western Buddha
from On Nature

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“When men are enlightened enough to follow their natural instincts, they will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money”

— Zeno Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς 334 – 262 BCE
(of Citium)

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“When men are enlightened enough to follow their natural instincts, they will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money.”

— Zeno Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς 334 – 262 BCE
(of Citium)

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“The ordinary, isolated intellect, no matter how brilliant or inspired, has not the energy to command our thoughts, words, impulses, memories and experiences in a way that conforms to truth and the Good.”

— Jesus 3 BCE – 30 CE via Didymos Judas Thomas
from Gospel According to Thomas

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“To wear coarse cloth is to become one with what is ordinary. To keep one’s jade concealed is to treasure the truth. Sages are difficult to know because they do not differ from ordinary people and because they do not reveal their treasure of jade.”

— Wang Bi 王弼 226 – 534 CE

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“The reason the Tao is esteemed by the world is because it cannot be known or perceived. If it could be known or perceived, why should it be esteemed?... Thus sages wear an embarrassed, foolish expression and seldom show anyone their great and noble virtue.”

— Lu Huiqing 1031 – 1111 CE

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“The teaching's voice is total silence amid the ringing wind chimes. The moon hangs in the old pine tree, cold in the falling night.”

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

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“The Tao is also hard to understand and hard to put into practice… because all words are wrong, because it cannot be learned, and because the mind only leads us astray. Effortless stillness is not necessarily right, and actionless activity is not necessarily wrong.”

— Li Xizhai 1 via Red Pine
(Li Hsi-Chai)
from Tao-te-chen-ching yi-chieh

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“The deeds you do may be the only sermon some people will ever hear.”

— Francis of Assisi 1181 – 1226 CE

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“Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.”

— Mumon Ekai 無門慧開 1183 – 1260 CE
(Wumen Huikai)
Pioneering pathfinder to the Gateless Gate

from The Gateless Gate, 無門関, 無門關

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“One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works.”

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

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“Never suppose that either the evil or the good that you do will remain secret, however strict may be your enclosure.”

— Teresa of Avila 1515 – 1582 CE
from Way of Perfection

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“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

— Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 1694 – 1778 CE

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“Rest not - life is sweeping by
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime,
leave behind to conquer time.”

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE

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“Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.”

— William Blake 1757 – 1827 CE

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“we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor… No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.”

— Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

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“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

— Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910 CE

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“How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog. To tell your name the livelong day, To an admiring bog!”

— Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886 CE

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“Saying nothing sometimes says the most.”

— Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886 CE

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“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”

— Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author

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“Never explain―your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.”

— Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915 CE

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“We are so greatly tempted to turn everything into purpose and method that I deliberately express myself in very abstract terms in order to avoid causing a prejudice in one direction or another.”

— Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist

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“Therefore it is the law of the mystics to see all things, to experience all things, either of heaven or earth, and yet to say little.”

— Inayat Khan 1882 – 1927 CE

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“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”

— Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

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“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”

— T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965 CE

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“I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.”

— Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 CE

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“If all was told, supposing there lived a person who could tell all, there would be no mysteries left, and that would be very bad. Man cannot live without mystery.”

— John Fire Lame Deer 1903 – 1976 CE via Richard Erdoes
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

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“you don’t spell out the truth, you imply the truth with wakeful delight… When you spell out the truth it loses its essence and becomes either ‘my’ truth or ‘your’ truth… By implying the truth, the truth doesn’t become anyone’s property.”

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

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“Words and deeds can be falsified, but not understanding and practice… As with geodes, jade is found inside ordinary looking rocks. Officals once wore it on their hats as an emblem of their status, and alchemists often included it in their elixirs.”

— Red Pine 1943 CE –
( Bill Porter)
Exceptional translator, cultural diplomat

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“You can't find the right roads when the streets are paved.”

— Bob Marley 1945 – 1981 CE

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