It is not he who has lived the longest, but he who has traveled the farthest, who knows the most.

-- Armenian Proverb

To understand things we must have been once in them and then have come out of them; so that first there must be captivity and then deliverance, illusion followed by disillusion, enthusiasm by disappointment. He who is still under the spell, and he who has never felt the spell, are equally incompetent. We only know well what we have first believed, then judged. To understand we must be free, yet not have been always free. The same truth holds, whether it is a question of love, of art, of religion or of patriotism. Sympathy is a first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion.

-- Amiel

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside!

-- Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Love one another, but make not a bond of love;
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shore of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf;
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

-- Kahlil Gibran

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

-- William Jennings Bryan

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?

If you don't understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret.

-- Lao-tzu

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

-- George Eliot

I will not permit any man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

-- Booker T. Washington

Trust your hunches.They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.

-- Dr. Joyce Brothers

Lecturer, entrepreneur and MBA business consultant, John Harricharan is the author of the award-winning book, "When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat." Spiritual Simplicity The Real Secret http://www.spiritual-simplicity.com/