Benjamin Hoff Quotes

#1. Practically everything from hairstyles to lifestyles is endorsed as some sort of drug to be taken Now for Instant Relief.

Benjamin Hoff

#2. No matter how useful we may be, sometimes it takes us a while to recognize our own value.

Benjamin Hoff

#3. From the Taoist point of view, the natural result of this harmonious way of living is happiness.

Benjamin Hoff

#4. Modern man's difficulties, dangerous beliefs and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness,and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world.

Benjamin Hoff

#5. The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.

Benjamin Hoff

#6. It means that Tao doesn't force or interfere with things, but lets them work in their own way, to produce results naturally. Then whatever needs to be done is done.

Benjamin Hoff

#7. Unfortunately complaining is one thing Eeyores are not afraid to do. They grudgingly carry their thimbles to the Fountain of Life, then mumble and grumble that they weren't given enough.

Benjamin Hoff

#8. The Bisy Backson is always going somewhere, somewhere he hasn't been. Anywhere but where he is.

Benjamin Hoff

#9. If people were superior to animals, they'd take good care of them, said Pooh.

Benjamin Hoff

#10. Treat gain and loss the same.' Don't be Intimidated. Don't make a Big Deal of anything - just accept things as they come to you.

Benjamin Hoff

#11. When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.

Benjamin Hoff

#12. Wherever Gandhi went, he transformed situations and lives. As one friend and biographer wrote, He ... changed human beings by regarding them not as what they thought they were but as though they were what they wished to be, and as though the good in them was all of them

Benjamin Hoff

#13. Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.

Benjamin Hoff

#14. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.

Benjamin Hoff

#15. A way of life that keeps saying 'Around the next corner, above the next step,' works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.

Benjamin Hoff

#16. Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything.

Benjamin Hoff

#17. Those who think that the rewarding things in life are somewhere over the rainbow 'burn their toast a lot,' said Pooh

Benjamin Hoff

#18. Do you want to be really happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got. Do you want to be really miserable? You can begin by being discontented.

Benjamin Hoff

#19. While Eeyore frets ... and Piglet hesitates ... and Rabbit calculates ... and Owl pontificates ... Pooh just is.

Benjamin Hoff

#20. Reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has.

Benjamin Hoff

#21. The Infinite Universal Power is more than just a narrow-minded gatekeeper to a spiritual County Club.

Benjamin Hoff

#22. You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.

Benjamin Hoff

#23. Cleverness, as usual, takes all the credit it possibly can. But it's not the clever mind that's responsible when things work out. It's the mind that sees what's in front of it, and follows the nature of things.

Benjamin Hoff

#24. Through working in harmony with life's circumstances, Taoist understanding changes what others may percieve as negative into something positive.

Benjamin Hoff

#25. "What's that?" the Unbeliever asked.
"Wisdom from the Western Taoist,"I said.
"It sounds like something from Winnie-the-Pooh ," he said.
"It is," I said.
"That's not about Taoism," he said.
"Oh, yes it is," I said."

Benjamin Hoff

#26. Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.

Benjamin Hoff

#27. The play-it-safe pessimists of the world never accomplish much of anything, because they don't look clearly and objectively at situations, they don't recognize or believe in their own abilities to overcome even the smallest amount of risk.

Benjamin Hoff

#28. Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. That is the message of The Vinegar Tasters.

Benjamin Hoff

#29. Cleverness, after all, has its limitations. Its mechanical judgments and clever remarks tend to prove inaccurate with passing time, because it doesn't look very deeply into things to begin with

Benjamin Hoff

#30. Inner Nature, when relied on, cannot be fooled. But many people do not look at it or listen to it, and consequently do not understand themselves very much. Having little understanding of themselves, they have little respect for themselves, and are therefore easily influenced by others.

Benjamin Hoff

#31. Well, it takes all kinds to make a mess.

Benjamin Hoff

#32. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet.

Benjamin Hoff

#33. To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.

Benjamin Hoff

#34. Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.

Benjamin Hoff

#35. It is very hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."
Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: "It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.

Benjamin Hoff

#36. There is more to knowing than just being correct

Benjamin Hoff

#37. Enjoy the simple, the natural and the plain. Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work.

Benjamin Hoff

#38. Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got.

Benjamin Hoff

#39. The Universe knows what it's doing. So don't develop a big ego, and don't be afraid.

Benjamin Hoff

#40. Whether many people realize it yet or not, man, the Inferior Animal, has by now proved himself incapable of keeping his own species - and others - alive for very much longer. So the earth has begun its own plan to set things right.

Benjamin Hoff

#41. Pooh is able to accomplish what he does because he is simpleminded.

Benjamin Hoff

#42. Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That's why I remember things so well.

Benjamin Hoff

#43. Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they're part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They're not only the ending, but the beginning as well.

Benjamin Hoff

#44. The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much.

Benjamin Hoff

#45. The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.

Benjamin Hoff

#46. Things may get a little odd at times, but they work out. You don't have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them.

Benjamin Hoff

#47. We simply need to believe in the power that's within us, and use it.

Benjamin Hoff

#48. Knowledge and Experience do not necessarily speak the same language.

Benjamin Hoff

#49. Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time.

Benjamin Hoff

#50. But the basic Taoism that we are concerned with here is simply a particular way of appreciating, learning from, and working with whatever happens in everyday life.

Benjamin Hoff

#51. But isn't the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn't? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around - walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.

Benjamin Hoff

#52. When you discard arrogance' cool gritty, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the uncared block: life is fun.

Benjamin Hoff

#53. If "good" is not necessarily good, and "bad" not necessarily bad, what is "small"?

Benjamin Hoff

#54. What we need to do is recognize inner nature and work with things as they are. When we don't we get in trouble.

Benjamin Hoff

#55. When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don't belong.

Benjamin Hoff

#56. As any old Taoist walking out of the woods can tell you, simple-minded does not necessarily mean stupid.

Benjamin Hoff

#57. The masters of life know the way, for they listen to the voice within them, the voice of wisdom and simplicity, the voice that reasons beyond cleverness and knows beyond knowledge.

Benjamin Hoff

#58. A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.

Benjamin Hoff

#59. The Eeyore Educational System sees childhood as a waste of time, a luxury that society cannot afford ... Put children in school at the earliest age possible; load them down with homework; take away their time, their creativity, their play, their power; then plug them into machines.

Benjamin Hoff

#60. Lots of people talk to animals ... Not very many listen though ... that's the problem.

Benjamin Hoff