To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.

The origin of the conflict, frustration, and anxiety we experience does not lie in the nature of the world itself but in our distorted conceptions of the world.

Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.

While 'Buddhism' suggests another belief system, 'dharma practice' suggests a course of action. The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe; they are challenges to act.

What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)

In taking life for granted, we fail to notice it.

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.

The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority.

This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.

We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to.

God will not punish you when you speak your mind, because he speaks through you if he truly lives in you.

We can rattle our sabers all we want but, realistically, we don't have troops for an invasion [Iran] and surgical strikes aren't going to work.

Of great interest to students and teachers of immigrant history as well as to those of Polish descent.

I've been an REM fan since I was a little girl. I would jump around to 'Stand' in the mirror.

I danced growing up. I had two friends of mine that, actually, one of them wound up dancing with Alvin Ailey.

It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.

Everything is a work-in-progress.

To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.

It's important to wake up everyday and remind yourself what you're working towards. You create your own life, it's not set out there for you.

I'm mischievous. The idea of taking risks and having real-world consequences energizes me.