Eastern Philosophy And Meditation - Timeless Eastern Philosophy Quotes

"Hatred does not cease in this world by hating, but by not hating; this is an eternal truth." - Buddha

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." - Buddha

"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires." - Lao-tzu

"There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed." - Lao-tzu

"Humanity and justice are the principles on which to govern a state." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower, to hold infinity in the palm of the hand, and eternity in an hour." -William Blake

The Good Brahmin. The Brahmin said, "I wish I had never been born." "Why so?" said I. "Because," he replied, "I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost … I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands … I talk a great deal and when I have done speaking, I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said." The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made? She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions she thought herself the happiest of women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed: "Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?"

"You are right," he replied. "I have said to myself a thousand times That I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is a happiness which I do not desire." This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than anything that had passed.

"Our greatest glory lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." -Confucius.

If everything must have a cause then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause then it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly the same nature as the Indian's view, that the world rested upon an elephant, and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian replied, "Suppose we change the subject." This argument is really no better than that.

"To spend too much time in studies is sloth, to use them too much for ornamentation is affectation, to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar … Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation." - Francis Bacon The Essays

"In books we converse with the wise, as in action with fools." - Francis Bacon The Essays

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested." - Francis Bacon The Essays