"We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen."
"We are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments- but all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken."
"Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when that person looks back- and at some point everyone looks back- she will hear her heart saying, 'What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage: the certainty that you wasted your life.'
Pitiful are the people who must realize this. Because when they are finally able to believe in miracles, their life's magic moments will have already passed them by."
"We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice."
"Some people always have to be doing battle with someone, sometimes even with themselves, battling with their own lives. So they begin to create a kind of play in their head, and they write the script based on their frustrations. But the worst part is that they cannot present the play by themselves. So they begin to invite other actors to join in. Be careful. When you join in that game, you always wind up losing."
"Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown- even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to."
"The truth resides where there is faith."
"Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."
"A scientist who studied monkeys on an island in Indonesia was able to teach a certain one to wash bananas in the river before eating them. Cleansed of sand and dirt, the food was more flavorful. The scientist- who did this only because he was studying the learning capacity of monkeys- did not imagine what would eventually happen. So he was surprised to see that the other monkeys on the island began to imitate the first one.
And then, one day, when a certain number of monkeys had learned to wash their bananas, the monkeys on all of the other islands in the archipelago began to do the same thing. What was most surprising, though, was that the other monkeys learned to do so without having had any contact with the island where the experiment had been conducted.
...when a certain number of people evolve, the entire human race begins to evolve."
"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path."
"Dreams mean work."
