“من لم يتحرر من الاكراه في صورتيه: اكراه الاخر والخضوع للاخر، لايستطيع فهم هذا الدين وتمثيله”

“WisdomWhen I have ceased to break my wings Against the faultiness of things, And learned that compromises wait Behind each hardly opened gate, When I can look Life in the eyes, Grown calm and very coldly wise, Life will have given me the Truth, And taken in exchange — my youth.”

“If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck”

“A person is a person through other persons.None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.”

“The best teachers have showed me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly–we only think it does. The motion of drawing back a bow and sending an arrow straight into a target takes only a split second, but it is a skill many years in the making. So it is with a life, anyone’s life. I may list things that might be described as my accomplishments in these few pages, but they are only shadows of the larger truth, fragments separated from the whole cycle of becoming. And if I can tell an old-time story now about a man who is walking about, waudjoset ndatlokugan, a forest lodge man, alesakamigwi udlagwedewugan, it is because I spent many years walking about myself, listening to voices that came not just from the people but from animals and trees and stones.”

“Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.”

“Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention. The seagull may intend to fly away, may decide to do so, may talk with the other seagulls about how wonderful it is to fly, but until the seagull flaps his wings and takes to the air, he is still on the dock. There’s no difference between that gull and all the others. Likewise, there is no difference in the person who intends to do things differently and the one who never thinks about it in the first place. Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.”

“Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled.”

“To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.”

“All our wisdom is stored in the trees.”

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”

“Your biggest opportunity probably lies under your own feet, in your current job, industry, education, experience or interests.”

“اود ان اقول لك: ان بعد كل خيار هناك خيارات اخرى.. حياتنا هذه ليست خيارا واحدا نؤديه ونستسلم بعدها لكل ما يحدث بنا. حياتنا ليست مفترق طريق منفرد و وحيد نختار اي جهة سنسلك وينتهي الامر بعدها.. ابدا.. كل خيار يفتح سلسلة من الخيارات. وكل مفترق طريق يحوي خلفه سلسلة من مفترقات طرق.. وفي كل خطوة من خطوات حياتنا يوجد قدران، نختار واحدا منهما بملء ارادتنا..”

“This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, “There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who’s in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.”

“truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”