Shunryu Suzuki

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. – Shunryu Suzuki

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you can not eat.

When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Preparing food is not just about yourself and others. It is about everything!

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Women tell men things that they are not likely to find out for themselves.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

There are no have-to’s, just choices.

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.