Books are the treasured wealth of the world
and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
- Henry David Thoreau
I confessed recently to an old friend,
"I realized I was looking at you,
in your visit, through old glasses.
Speaking old words.
Telling old stories.
I realize that in my life I've made so many
physical changes and I need to give my spirit time to catch up."
Time for my spirit to look at my friend
through the new glasses of current life experiences.
Old friends are precious.
They become even more treasured when they are wrapped
in the currentness of life experiences
and not relegated to the past in which they once lived.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
I love and treasure individuals as I meet them;
I loathe and despise the groups
they identify with and belong to.
- George Carlin
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
- Joseph Campbell
Life is an adventure.
I can only wonder what treasure
awaits at the top of the path.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Truth is the property of no individual
but is the treasure of all men.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price.
May He be so to every one of us.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Our deepest fears are like dragons
guarding our deepest treasure.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Any human being who is becoming independent of conditionings,
of religions, scriptures, prophets and messiahs, has arrived home.
He has found the treasure which was hidden in his own being.
- Osho
You cannot lose your real treasure.
- Osho
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy,
the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child.
The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
- Emma Goldman
Health is the greatest possession.
Contentment is the greatest treasure.
Confidence is the greatest friend.
Non-being is the greatest joy.
- Lao Tzu
I can only wonder what treasure awaits at the top of the path.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Unless we place our religion
and our treasure in the same thing,
religion will always be sacrificed.
- Epictetus
Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty.
- St. Francis of Assisi
It is by going down into the abyss
that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
- Joseph Campbell
Tradition is like a second-hand store.
It is best to sort carefully
between the treasures and the trash.
See everything with new eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu
We can only be said to be truly alive in those moments
when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
- Thornton Wilder
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
- Lao Tzu
Our loved ones -
whether by blood, by marriage, or by choice -
are delicate treasures.
If we hold them too close, they break -
as a butterfly would.
By honoring and enjoying
the freedom of our loved ones,
we gain our own freedom.
Have the courage to trust that
the beautiful butterflies of your life
will return - or not - as life intends.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth,
so virtue appears from good deeds,
and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind.
To walk safely through the maze of human life,
one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
- The Buddha
Tradition is the illusion of permanence.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Customs do not concern themselves
with right or wrong or reason.
But they have to be obeyed;
one reasons all around them until he is tired,
but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
- Mark Twain
Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau
Honor tradition AND question tradition.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
No written law has ever been more binding
than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
- Carrie Chapman Catt
The most erroneous stories are those
we think we know best -
and therefore never scrutinize or question.
- Stephen Jay Gould
Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
- Michel de Montaigne
What old people say you cannot do,
you try and find that you can.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is ever absolutely "wrong."
"Wrong" is in the cultural tradition of the beholder.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion
upon morals, political, or religion
which he got otherwise than
through his associations and sympathies.
- Mark Twain
Before moving on, you have to clear away your cherished beliefs.
- Dick Raymond
Mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.
- Thomas Jefferson
Are creeds such simple things like the clothes
which a man can change at will - and put on at will?
Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.
- Terry Goodkind
When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison
Who has fully realized that history
is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood?
- Carl Jung
The most dangerous phrase in the language is,
"We've always done it this way."
- Grace Hopper
Re-examine all that you have been told...
dismiss that which insults your soul.
- Walt Whitman
What people believe prevails over the truth.
- Sophocles
The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Trumpet in a herd of elephants;
crow in the company of cocks;
bleat in a flock of goats.
- Malayan Proverb
Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,
deliberate, contrived and dishonest,
but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
- John F. Kennedy
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We shape our dwellings, and afterwards
our dwellings shape us.
- Winston Churchill
In this outward and physical ceremony,
we attest once again to the inner
and spiritual strength of our Nation.
As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say:
"We must adjust to changing times,
and still hold to unchanging principles."
- Jimmy Carter
Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Let reason trump tradition and the opinions of others,
but let your own sense of what is Right trump even reason.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Nothing is more dangerous to tradition
than the creative imagination of youth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
You can't move so fast that you try to change
the mores faster than people can accept it.
That doesn't mean you do nothing,
but it means that you do the things that
need to be done according to priority.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
This overcoming of all the usual barriers
between the individual and the Absolute
is the great mystic achievement.
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute
and we become aware of our oneness.
This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition,
hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
- William James
Do not let spacious plans for a new world
divert your energies from saving
what is left of the old.
- Winston Churchill
Without tradition, art is a
flock of sheep without a shepherd.
Without innovation, it is a corpse.
- Winston Churchill
Laws are sand, customs are rock.
Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted, just the same.
Certainly, then, there can be but one wise thing
for a visiting stranger to do -
find out what the country's customs are,
and refrain from offending against them.
- Mark Twain
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- Woody Allen
There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone.
Only through our love and friendship can we
create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
- Orson Welles
Nothing is missing - Lack is an illusion.
We always have everything we truly need.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
- Ludwig Boerne
The distinction between the past, present and future
is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
- Albert Einstein
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -
it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Daniel J. Boorstin
There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
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
What if it were only an illusion?
Perhaps life is not as threatening as it appears.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our serenity
is our fear of the future -
our fear of the unknown.
Perhaps, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said,
"The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The believing we do something when we do nothing
is the first illusion of tobacco.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.