Quotations

"It is what makes us human, what distinguishes us from other animals. We can be aware of being aware."

— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, born 1944

"In Asian languages, the word for 'mind' and the word for 'heart' are same. So if you're not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you're not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention."

— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, born 1944

"Since the fall of Adam, Man's soul has been naked. God gave him a body in this world so that he could use it to do good deeds, which would sculpt him into God's image and clothe him in garments of light when he returns."

— Kabbalah

"When one person touches another with an act of kindness, their lights fuse for a moment, and from that union, an angel is born."

— Kabbalah

"First we receive the light, then we impart it. Thus we repair the world."

— Kabbalah

"But if a mirror ever makes you sad, you should know that it does not know you."

— Kabir, Indian Mystic, born 1398

"The river that flows in you also flows in me."

— Kabir, Indian mystic born 1440

"I sell mirrors in the city of the blind."

— Kabir, Indian mystic, born 1440

"If I make the seven oceans ink, if I make the trees my pen, if I make the earth my paper, the glory of God cannot be written."

— Kabir, Indian mystic, born 1440

"All darkness vanished, when I saw the Lamp within my heart."

— Kabir, Indian mystic, born in 1440

"I laugh when I hear that fish in the water are thirsty."

— Kabir, Indian Mystic, born 1398

"You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."

— Franz Kafka, German-language writer, born 1883

"A cage went in search of a bird."

— Franz Kafka, German-language writer, born 1883

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

— Franz Kafka, German-language writer, born 1883