Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester.

It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.

Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

I think our movie, 'Now You See Me, ' is an emotional movie rooted in smart and wits and fully amazing actors working perfectly together. It's like a supergroup of musicians.

The purpose of education is to teach a defense against eloquence.

Take your bottom lip and pull it over your head.

No nation now sets forth to despoil another upon the avowed ground that it desires the spoils.

Why can I write 'South' with some assurance that you'll know I mean Richmond and don't mean Phoenix? What is it that the South's boundaries enclose?

We belong to a tradition where we treat the entire universe as our family. For me, globalisation is the manifestation of nationalisation. There is no contradiction between the two.

Love is awesome and endless, but it is constantly changing its form. You love something for what it is, then it changes. But that change can make you love it even more.

The absent danger greater still appears less fears he who is near the thing he fears.

Chirren [children] is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two.