Pema Chodron Quotes

Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden.

If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

the important consideration is not your opponents, but yourself. It is bad to scream at them, not because it hurts them, they ought to be hurt, but because it hurts you. Anger is a form of recognition. It amounts to admitting that those people are important to you and that they have the power to hurt you. Actually, they haven't.

It is only when you're lying to yourself or hating some aspect of yourself that you'll get an emotional charge from someone else's behavior.

What you are comes to you.

Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. It's always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.

I find that we must be careful not to judge or weigh in on anything other than ourselves. I am living and learning this still!

The ability to reflect is associated with critical thinking and reasoning ability. And the capacity to be alone is one of the highest levels of development. It's important to know how to self-soothe and be confident of other people's love even when they're not there in front of you.

If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.

There's something very touching to me about someone almost communicating to themselves in some way - trying to come to some deeper understanding of yourself and having compassion for yourself.

The truth is that you shouldn't match your insides to other people's outsides. Life is an inside job, and we just have to do our best.

In every person, you have a world of personalities and souls, a world of perspectives that you can share. You can get into anyone's shoes. You've got to be willing to stare at the ugliest part of yourself and deal with it.

You need not search for the compassionate mind from outside. To know yourself, to know your nature, your mind will automatically be the compassionate one.

I'm getting older and I'm just coming to terms that I'm stuck with me so I better try to like myself.

When you start to find balance, then you start to ask more important questions, like, 'Who am I really?' That's when you start seeing that every single person around you is a human being just doing the best that they can.

A conscience is a troublesome thing at times. I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and I spent the time feeling what a nothing I was, and wishing I was so very different. Then the morning's post brought me a letter from a friend, saying I was so this, so that - it made me really cry, I was so grateful.

However unchristian it may seem, I do not even bear any ill feeling towards myself.

To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you.

If you love yourself, if you truly love yourself, then you'll see other people in yourself, and you won't behave that way.

Love yourself. KNOW thyself. And be mindful of your thoughts.

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

If we are incapable of finding peace in ourselves, it is pointless to search elsewhere.

What do you care? You always liked loneliness better than you liked people. No offence liking yourself's the beginning of all love.

Knowest thou not the beauty of thine own face? Quit this temper that leads thee to war with thyself.

I know that you cannot hate other people without hating yourself.