Jack Kornfield

The aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

It is possible to be free and loving no matter what your circumstances.

No matter how hard the past is, we can always begin again.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

The Public is merely a multiplied “me”.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.