Wendell Johnson

If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.

When you get emotional, slow your thoughts down, and listen attentively (write it down). That way, you’ll be able to hear what you are thinking. You do this becoming very still and very quiet, and recording your thoughts. These high-speed thoughts and internal reactions always precede your feelings and emotions. Trust me, you did tell yourself something if you now feel anger, mad, anxious, frustrated, sad or depressed. From now on, whenever you get upset, listen ever so carefully, to what you are telling yourself.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

You, and only you, choose how you feel.

[On leaving Brooklyn] I left the day I graduated high school.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

If you really understand Zen, you can use any book, even the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.

Every situation needs a hero. Step up and be that for your child.

Foolproof systems don’t take into account the ingenuity of fools.

Know your goal, make a plan and pull the trigger.

Nothing endures but change.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

We want to have something of everything-we have types of every sort of wagon and carriage ever used in this country, from the covered wagon of the pioneer to the last style of buggy. We have nearly every type of agricultural instrument, every type of musical instrument, we have all kinds and sorts of furniture and household effects. One of these days the collection will have its own museum at Dearborn, and there we shall reproduce the life of the country in its every age.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.