Robert Collier was a popular author in the self-help and metaphysical realm. The metaphysical movie titled ‘The Secret’ referenced his writings.
“One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true or false. It comes to be dominating thought in one's mind.”
- Robert Collier (1885-1950)
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A quotation by American historian, attorney, author, professor and the ‘Librarian of Congress’ appointed by President Ford.
“Since the Creator had made the facts of the after-life inaccesible to man, He must not have required that man understand death in order to live fruitfully.”
- Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-2004)
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John Rich was a director and theatre manager in 18th century London.
“If everybody contemplates the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera.”
- John Rich (1692-1761)
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Chief Seattle, leader of the Suwamish Tribe in what is now the state of Washington, was known for pursuing a path of peace with the white settlers.
“If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.”
- Chief Seattle (1786-1866)
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Albert Schweitzer won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1955 for his philosophy of ‘reverence for life’.
“To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.”
- Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
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French intellectual and novelist, Marcel Proust, is best known for his monumental work, ‘Remembrance of Things Past’. His work was referenced in the recent movie, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’.
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
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Born Deirdre Brown in 1936, Pema Chodron, became a Buddhist monk in 1974. She was and continues to be instrumental in making the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism relevant to western people.
“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”
- Pema Chodron (1936- )
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Born in India in 1946, Deepak Chopra, MD, was influenced by the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, as well as through the study of quantum physics.
“To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.”
- Deepak Chopra (1946 - )
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Danish born Karen Blixen used Isak Denisen as a pen name. She is best known for ‘Out of Africa’, an account of her years living in Kenya. It was also made into a movie that starred Robert Redford and Meryl Streep.
“I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”
- Karen Blixen [Isak Denisen] (1885-1962)
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Two quotes from Stephen Hawking, a British theoretical physicist, best known for his work involving black holes. He was a good but not exceptional student in school. He may be best known for his book, A Brief History in Time, written in 1988, which gave him world renown, and made his name a household word.
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe and that makes us something very special.”
“I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.”
- Stephen Hawking (1942- )
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The Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist and writer, Viktor Frankl, was liberated from a camp in 1945. His hallmark philosophy was that life has meaning even in the most painful and absurd situations.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
- Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)
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A director and musician from the silent film era, Chaplin was considered one of the finest mimes ever to perform.
“Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.”
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
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Deepak Chopra, originally from India, is a medical physician and an Ayurvedic practitioner who has lectured and authored many books on spirituality, health and the mind-body connection.
“My own life has been touched often by synchronicity, so much so that now I get on an airplane expecting the passenger in the next seat to be surprisingly important to me, either just the voice I need to hear to solve a problem or a missing link in a transaction that needs to come together....”
- Deepak Chopra (1946- )
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The tolling funeral bells Donne wrote so eloquently about have affected many through the centuries. From Hemingway who wrote his famous account of the Spanish Civil War, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', to the Dalai Lama, speaking of the troubles between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, “Remember we are all one - all the same.” Donne's words are universal, yet achingly personal.
“No man is an island... entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
- John Donne (1572-1631)
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J. Krishnamurti was a well known writer and speaker on spiritual subjects. He renounced his status as the reincarnated Maitreya Buddha at the age of 34. Well read and fluent in many languages, he influenced George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Campbell and Deepak Chopra, to name a few. As a child he was frequently beaten at school and at home for his ‘mentally retarded’ demeanor.
“Meditation is the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.”
- J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
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