A tree fears an axe even though its handle is made from it.

A genuine smile is one of the world’s rarest treasures.

A fish that is afraid of drowning in a river is ignorant of its gifts.

A diamond earns its sparkle from the pressure it endures.

It is in the storm, not the calm, that a rainbow is born.

A determined seed cannot be hidden from the world, not even by dirt.

Calm skies don't make skillful eagles.

If you cry in the rain, only the sky will see your tears.

Birds keep singing beautiful songs, even if they have no audience.

Today's storms help you appreciate tomorrow’s sunshine.

Train the ears to hear more, the eyes to see more, the hands to do more, the feet to accomplish more, the mind to think more, the heart to feel more, and the soul to love more.

What if feeling good only comes after you destroy someone you hate?''That's not good, that's triumph,

When one has love for God, one doesn't feel any physical attraction to wife, children, relatives and friends. One retains only compassion for them.

Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.

A joke was not a single-use item but something you brought out again and again until it fell apart in your hand like a cheap umbrella.

Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.

If we get too caught up in the rhetoric of meditation, we will miss the point. The point was to go beyond rhetoric.

Everyone drank to popular education and to the irrigation of Uzbekistan.

Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.

It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.