Zen Koan Quotes

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

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

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 book of life is filled with incoherent riddles.
Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson

There are trivial truths and there are great truths.
The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false.
The opposite of a great truth is also true.
- Niels Bohr

The true delight is in the finding out,
rather than in the knowing.
- Isaac Asimov

Everything deep is also simple
and can be reproduced simply
as long as its reference
to the whole truth is maintained.
But what matters is not what is witty
but what is true.
- Albert Schweitzer

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates

Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin -
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson

Smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Society censors our actions,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

True learning is not about facts,
but about conscious appreciation
of the experience of living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

'Tis strange - but true;
for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
- Lord Byron

Loving, hating, having expectations:
all these are attachments.
Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.
- Lao Tzu

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true
were really true, there would be little hope of advance.
- Orville Wright

True wisdom cannot be learned in a lifetime,
but can be revealed in a moment,
for it has always lived within each and every one of us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The true sign of intelligence
is not knowledge but imagination.
- Albert Einstein

Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.
- Lao Tzu

It's not what you don't know that kills you,
it's what you know for sure that ain't true.
- Mark Twain

"To know" is to know that you know nothing.
That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Confucius

We seek opinions that are likely to
support what we want to be true.
- Thomas Gilovich

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west;
people create distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true.
- The Buddha

Many persons have a wrong idea of
what constitutes true happiness.
It is not attained through self-gratification
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller

Our actions are constrained by fear of reprisal,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If evil be spoken of you
and it be true, correct yourself,
if it be a lie, laugh at it.
- Epictetus

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -
broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false,
and lofty things from low.
- Helen Keller

You are never given a wish without also
being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
- Richard Bach

We censor our actions, but
our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Only one who devotes himself to a cause
with his whole strength and soul
can be a true master.
For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
- Albert Einstein

A true "moral compass" never points toward discrimination.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Nobody needs your help.
I know, I know, this is a difficult one. But it is true.
This does not mean no one wants your help,
or that no one could use your help.
It simply means the thought that another
Aspect of Divinity is powerless without you is inaccurate.
- Neale Donald Walsch

Once you have mastered time,
you will understand how true it is that
most people overestimate what
they can accomplish in a year -
and underestimate what
they can achieve in a decade!
- Tony Robbins

A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer

A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates

The secret of making dreams come true
can be summarized in four C's.
They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy;
and the greatest of these is Confidence.
- Walt Disney

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.
- The Buddha

All our dreams can come true,
if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney

You do not need anyone's permission to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Be true to thyself.
- William Shakespeare
(paraphrase of Shakespeare's famous quote)

The key to happiness is having dreams.
The key to success is making your dreams come true.
- Anonymous

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

Play with life, laugh with life,
dance lightly with life,
and smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

True happiness... is not attained
through self-gratification,
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller

Only those who have learned the power
of sincere and selfless contribution
experience life's deepest joy: true fulfillment.
- Tony Robbins

Know that you do not need anyone's permission
to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Women are like teabags.
We don't know our true strength
until we are in hot water!
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced,
and today we think this more than ever, and are just as wrong
as all previous ages that thought so.
How often have we not seen the truth condemned!
It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung

People are like stained glass windows,
they sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when darkness sets in their true beauty
is revealed only if there is a light from within.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
- Abraham Lincoln

Compassion and generosity must be the heart of any true religion.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There are not many things in life
so beautiful as true friendship,
and not many things more uncommon.
- Anonymous

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship
is to understand and to be understood.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.
If it be true that optimism compels the world forward,
and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to
propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
- Helen Keller

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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