Jack Kornfield

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

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

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

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

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Beauty without expression is boring.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

We’re so infatuated with studying labels that we forget to read between the lines of one another.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it; at any rate, brag.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.