Setting the intention to practice kindness toward one’s partner or family members or friends does not preclude getting angry or upset.

Smiling at someone can have significant health consequences.

Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.

When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.

Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier.

For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance.

The idea that traumatic residues—or unresolved stories—can be inherited is groundbreaking.

The unconscious mind is a vast repository of experiences and associations that sorts things out much faster than the slow-moving conscious mind.

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else’s success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.

Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.

Reassuring thoughts have a funny way of getting stuck on repeat. Then you wake up one day and you can't remember where you put the last thirty years of your life.

The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.

Just as one can make a lot of garlands from a heap of flowers, so man, subject to birth and death as he is, should make himself a lot of good karma.

As children we listened to the sound of the sea still echoing in the shell we picked up by the shore. That ancestral roar links us to the great sea which surges within us as well.

Our mission is to go after Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Right now, they are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. We should go after them wherever they are.

God didn't make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God... If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

Doubt means don't. Don't move. Don't answer. Don't rush forward.

Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.

As I lay me down to sleep, this I pray. That you will hold me, dear. Though I'm far away, I whisper your name into the sky. And I will wake up happy.