Toshio Quotes

#1. Whenever I'm around people it causes me to feel nostalgic for the loneliness that drove me into their presence in the first place.

Dov Davidoff

#2. A student might ask, how long will it take to learn guitar ... , the answer is, as long as you live - that short.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#3. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater ... when you start hating anybody, it destroys the very center of your creative response to life and the universe; so love everybody.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#4. To ask the mind to kill itself is like making the thief the policeman. He will go with you and pretend to catch the thief, but nothing will be gained. So you must turn inward and see where the mind rises from, and then it will cease to exist.

Ramana Maharshi

#5. Autonomous people, nations, and systems can promote each other's welfare; they do not have to fight each other like those whose inner insecurity and immaturity continually demand the demarcation of limits and postures of intimidation.

Christa Wolf

#6. Now what kind of an attitude is that, 'These things happen?' They only happen because this whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen, they just say, 'These things happen,' and that's why they happen! We gotta have control of what happens to us.

Ethel Merman

#7. This means that I don't have to run faster than the psychotic-maniac-vampire-cannibal, I just have to run faster than whoever is with me when the psychotic-maniac-vampire-cannibal starts chasing us.

Jim Benton

#8. Life was unendurable, and yet everywhere it was endured.

Lorrie Moore

#9. Do not analyze things to death. Sometimes the best strategy is, "Ready, fire, aim." Do it first , then make adjustments. The answer lies in action-not in words.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#10. We take life for granted, sleepwalking until a shattering event knocks us awake. Zen says, don't wait until the car accident, the cancer diagnosis, or the death of a loved one to get your priorities straight. Do it now.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#11. Zen teaches that our approach to today determines our whole approach to life.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#12. You can't be more alive than you are - but you can awaken to what living is.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#13. There is no yesterday or tomorrow; there is only this moment. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred sixty-five days a year.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#14. The only time and place to find enlightenment is in this moment. No need to check your watch. The time is now.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#15. All things reflect the divine energy of nature - every flower, every rock, every sound, every sight. Once we realize that truth, we cannot help but smile.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#16. Maturity means learning the value of that which is hard-earned.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#17. One of the blessings that comes from paying a full tithing is developing faith to live an even higher law. To live in the celestial kingdom, we must live the law of consecration. There we must be able to feel that all we are and all we have belong to God.

Henry B. Eyring

#18. If you find your feet dragging, check your path. You are probably on the wrong one.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#19. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of charactermakes the state unnecessary. The wise man is the State.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#20. I stare at the mirror as I try to remember who I am and who I am not.

Suzanne Collins

#21. No one stopped buying I.B.M. because Tom Watson wasn't there, but they stopped buying Elizabeth Arden because she wasn't there.

Leonard Lauder

#22. Stop thinking about the audience and what they may be thinking of your music. Just play the music.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#23. When mind and action are separate, zen is lost. We keep the two in sync by paying attention.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#24. you don't need to understand any of the biology, just as you don't need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.

Timothy Ferriss

#25. Return to the beginning. Enter by form. Clean your dojo. As you have every day, tie on the white belt and empty your cup. Pick up your guitar, tune, then play.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#26. Each moment is new. We have never lived it before and will never live it again. It is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#27. I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?

Henry Louis Gates

#28. History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.

Simon Schama

#29. When we put our keys down, we should be conscious of putting them down. When we pick them up, we should be conscious of picking them up. That's all there is to zen.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#30. The 1.8 million child deaths each year related to clean water and sanitation dwarf the casualities associated with violent conflict. No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation. Yet the issue barely registers on the international agenda.

Rose George

#31. Put in an honest day's work. It is the building block of a spiritual life.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#32. Always thinks of the other; ego thinks only of oneself. Love is always considerate; ego is absolutely inconsiderate. Ego has only one language and that is of self. Ego always uses the other; love is ready to be used, love is ready to serve.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#33. The further we travel down the path of enlightenment, the more humble we become. We shouldn't seek to impress others - or allow ourselves to be taken - with mere outer trappings. If we do our inner work, our spirit will be our calling card. Nice to meet you.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#34. In zen, it is a cardinal sin to waste time. To waste time is to squander the here and now, which, if you think about it, is all that we have.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#35. A final word on self-criticism: Do not beat up on yourself. Even if you think you know your flaws, there is no need to advertise them. Most people won't have noticed.

Philip Toshio Sudo

#36. When in doubt, initiate. Say yes - to love, to life, to joining in with others. That is how we stay on the right path and, at the same time, elevate humanity.

Philip Toshio Sudo