Shunryu Suzuki

The world is its own magic.

Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. – Shunryu Suzuki

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

Whatever advice you give, be short.

Truth is a naked and open daylight.

Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.