I think it’d be a great honor to be able to influence someone’s joy.
When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.
The most powerful moral influence is example.
If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.
After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others; otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.
I don't want to justify religion in terms of its benefits to us. I believe that, on balance, it does a lot of bad things, too - a tremendous amount. But I don't think that the final justification of religion is the good it does for people. I think the final justification is that it's true, and truth takes priority over consequences. Religion helps us deal with what is most important to the human spirit: values, meaning, purpose, and quality.
We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one is the other.
Man is happy only as he finds work worth doing - and does it well
I don't use the computer. I do sketches, very quickly, often more than 100 on the same formal research.
You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.
Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do it.