Soyen Shaku

Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

Every wall is a door.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.

We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, — for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, — for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos; trees, clouds, everything.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

Remember where you came from.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

I look up at the universe and ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me here?’ I know I won’t hear a reply, but asking the question, makes me begin looking for the answer.

She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.