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The Sweetest Strawberry:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice,
he caught hold of the root of a wild vine
and swung himself over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where,
far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black,
little by little started to gnaw away the vine.
The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand,
he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.
- Zen Koan
The True Path is the path on which
there is no coming and no going.
- Traditional Zen Koan
What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
- Traditional Zen Koan
Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan
Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative
of the dignity of my high vocation,
and its many responsibilities.
Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way
to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
- Mother Teresa
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
- Mark Twain
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A man too busy to take care of his health is like
a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
- Spanish Proverb
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is,
he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
- Helen Keller
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
- Anonymous
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard
It doesn't matter how long my hair is
or what color my skin is
or whether I'm a woman or a man.
- John Lennon
Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty;
it is its own reward.
Everything else is in God's hands.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable
who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
- Joseph Addison
He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates
Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each man's life touches so many other lives.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)
A man who doesn't trust himself
can never really trust anyone else.
- Cardinal De Retz
The man who can't dance thinks the band is no good.
- Polish Proverb
I don't like that man.
I must get to know him better.
- Abraham Lincoln
No man is a failure who enjoys life.
- William Feather
Freedom is never dear at any price.
It is the breath of life.
What would a man not pay for living?
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?
- Luciano Pavarotti
The man form is higher than the angel form;
of all forms it is the highest.
Man is the highest being in creation,
because he aspires to freedom.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
What is happiness except the simple harmony
between a man and the life he leads?
- Albert Camus
Interdependence is and ought to be
as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.
Man is a social being.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
- Francis Bacon
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion
upon morals, political, or religion
which he got otherwise than
through his associations and sympathies.
- Mark Twain
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
- Carl Jung
Experience is not what happens to a man.
It is what a man does with what happens to him.
- Aldous Huxley
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval -
a thing which, to the general run of the human race,
is more dreaded than wolves and death.
- Mark Twain
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Habit is habit,
and not to be flung out of the window by any man,
but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain
A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker.
A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.
- The Buddha
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
- Anatole France
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy
Revenge... is like a rolling stone,
which, when a man hath forced up a hill,
will return upon him with a greater violence,
and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.
- Albert Schweitzer
The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
- Socrates
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations
comes nearest to perfection.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation
can be trusted to act humanely
or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
- Bertrand Russell
Every man has his own courage,
and is betrayed because he seeks in himself
the courage of other persons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
All religions must be tolerated...
for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
- Epictetus
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
- Henry David Thoreau
A man who dares to waste one hour of time
has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy
One of the illusions of life is that the present hour
is not the critical, decisive hour.
Write it on your heart that
every day is the best day in the year.
No man has learned anything rightly,
until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question
than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
- Bruce Lee
The man who promises everything, is sure to fulfill nothing,
and everyone who promises too much is in danger of
using evil means in order to carry out his promises,
and is already on the road to perdition.
- Carl Jung
What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman
in the midst of this world,
where each person is clinging to his piece of debris?
What's the proper salutation between people
as they pass each other in this flood?
- The Buddha
Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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