Since 2008, I’ve been compiling and sharing quotes as @dailyzen on Twitter. I used a social analytics tool to figure out the most popular posts of all time. Here are a bunch of them:
“People think you’re crazy if you talk about things they don’t understand.”
“You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
“I am that clumsy human, always loving, loving, loving. And loving. And never leaving.”
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes a day, unless you are too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”
“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not just surrounded by assholes.”
“You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.”
“Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.”
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”
“You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”
“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”
“I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.”
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy.”
“Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence.”
“The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”
“Let go or be dragged.”
“You fall in love with people’s minds.”
“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.”
“I don’t give a fuck what people think because people don’t think.”
— Kanye West
“And the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days.”
—Ray Wylie Hubbard
“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
“Maturing is realizing how many things don’t require your comment.”
— Rachel Wolchin
“Read books. Care about things. Get excited. Try not to be too down on yourself. Enjoy the ever present game of knowing.”
—Hank Green
“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
— Goethe, Faust
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
— Sigmund Freud
“Silence is the best reply to a fool.”
-Imam Ali
“We all have two lives. The second one begins when you realize you only have one.”
— Confucius
“People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.”
— Alan Watts
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”
― C.G. Jung
“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.”
—Dalai Lama
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes a day, unless you are too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”
— Zen Proverb
“Be curious, not judgmental.”
—Walt Whitman
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
—Carl Jung
“It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.”
— Stephen King
“I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.”
— E.M. Forster
“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
— Yoda
“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
―Kant
“Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.”
— Rita Mae Brown
“And in the end, we were all just humans… drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Most people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
“Never argue with an idiot. Someone watching may not be able to tell the difference.”
—Mark Twain
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
—Stephen R. Covey
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
—Anne Lamott
“People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.”
—Charles Bukowski
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
― Michael Crichton
“Learn to be alone, and to like it. There’s nothing more freeing and empowering than learning to like your own company.”
— Mandy Hale
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― C.G. Jung
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
— Rumi
“A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.”
— Irish proverb
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
― Lao Tzu
“The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything.”
— Bill Murray
“We don’t see things the way they are. We see them the way we are.”
—Talmud
“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”
—C. S. Lewis
“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“The cure for anything is salt water. Sweat, tears, or the ocean.”
— Isak Dinesen
“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
—Sigmund Freud
“He who angers you controls you.”
—Imam Ali
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your
thoughts about it.”
— Eckhart Tolle
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
—Frederick Buechner
“Hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.”
—Neil Gaiman
“Learn to be alone, and to like it. There’s nothing more freeing and empowering than learning to like your own company.”
— Mandy Hale
“The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always so sure about everything they are doing.”
— Vasudev
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”
— Tagore
“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright
“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
—Seth Godin
“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.”
— Lao Tzu
“How wonderful it is, to be silent with someone.”
—Kurt Tucholsky
“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
—Jack Kerouac
“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”
—Barry Switzer
“I had no shoes and complained, until I met a man who had no feet.”
—Indian Proverb
“Remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.”
—David Wong
“Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
― William S. Burroughs
“You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.”
—Anonymous
“If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.”
— John Mayer
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”
– Lao Tzu
“Yesterday I was clever and tried to change the world. Today I am wise and try to change myself.”
—Rumi
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
―Jung
“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
— Khaled Hosseini
“When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.”
― Victor Frankl
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
—Margaret Mead
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
—Jack Kerouac
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
—Oscar Wilde
“You only lose what you cling to.”
― Gautama Buddha
“The art of knowing is
knowing what to ignore.”
— Rumi
“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
–George Addair
“If you want to be happy, be.”
—Leo Tolstoy
“Sunshine all the time makes a desert.”
—Arab proverb
“One of my main regrets in life is giving considerable thought
to inconsiderate people.”
— Jarod Kintz
“Live, travel, adventure, bless,
and don’t be sorry.”
― Jack Kerouac
“Luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
—Daphne du Maurier
“Shut your eyes and see.”
― James Joyce
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
— Albert Einstein
“Having no destination, I am never lost.”
— Ikkyu
“It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.”
— Miyamoto Musashi
“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
― Oscar Wilde
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
— Rumi
“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”
—William Shakespeare
“It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he is in love, drunk, or running for office.”
— Shirley Maclaine
“It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.”
— Naguib Mahfouz
“And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.”
— Lemony Snicket
“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does
what he wants to do.”
–Bob Dylan
“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
—Rumi
“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh
“If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.”
—C.S Lewis
“Do it or don’t. It’s amazing how many things in life are that easy.”
—Henry Rollins
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
—Albert Camus
“Everybody does not have to like you. That is not their job. Liking you is not anyone’s purpose in life except yours.”
—Iyanla Vanzant
“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
—Epictetus
“When people give advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.”
—Austin Kleon
“You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“Life is a mystery to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.”
—Osho
“There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”
—Ali ibn abi Talib
“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?”
—Danielle LaPorte
“I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.”
—David Lynch
“Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”
—Erich Fromm
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
—Cormac McCarthy
“Have a mind that is open to everything, and attached to nothing.”
—Tilopa
“Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.”
—Alan Watts
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
— Aristotle
“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
—James Thurber
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
—Francis Bacon
“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.”
—Mark Twain
“I still catch myself feeling sad about things that don’t matter anymore.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
—Albert Camus
“People let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say ‘so what’.”
—Andy Warhol
“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth”
― Albert Camus
“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”
― Chuck Klosterman
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
—Aristotle
“Beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone.”
—Charles Bukowski
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
—Chinese Proverb
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus
“True friendship resists time, distance and silence.”
—Isabel Allende
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
—Rumi
“Blessed are those who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
—Camille Pissarro
“Everything passes. Everything changes. Just do what you think you should do.”
—Bob Dylan
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
— Marcus Aurelius
“The world doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”
— Pablo Picasso
“Creativity is the greatest rebellion.”
— Osho
“Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”
— Shunryu Suzuki
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
—Marcus Aurelius
“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there.”‘
—Eckhart Tolle
“The only way out is through.”
— Carl Jung
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
— Marcus Aurelius
“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”
― Jack Kerouac
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Don’t judge everyone else by your own limited experience.”
—Carl Sagan
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
—Frederick Buechner
“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
—Roald Dahl
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