Daisaku Ikeda Quotes

The gym of life has a free membership. Build powerful life-muscles through family gatherings from hell. Do you really want to be a happy, peaceful blob?

My faith helps me understand that circumstances don't dictate my happiness, my inner peace.

I can only control what I can control at the end of the day, so some things you just can't allow to take your head the other way, some things happen for a reason.

The lessons we learn from patience will cultivate our character, lift our lives, and heighten our happiness.

Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember "Life is too short to be little".

The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.

Fortitude: That quality of mind which does not care what happens so long as it does not happen to us.

Real hope is much more than wishful musing. It stiffens, not slackens, the spiritual spine.

The real enemy of happiness is the mind's fixations and delusions... If you have the right mind, you can overcome anything - you can be happy, no matter what.

As for life's tragedies, our love will defeat them. Love is the most effective cure. In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mind, so let us instill in ourselves the wisdom of love.

If you have high self-esteem, you might still know times of emotional suffering, but less often and with faster recovery-your resilience is greater.

I have to accept everything... I will be back strong.

Faith is a gateway to happiness that remains permanently accessible to each of us, wherever we are, no matter our circumstances.

The best recipe for happiness and contentment I've seen is this: dig a big hole in the garden of your thoughts and put into it all your disillusions, disappointments, regrets, worries, troubles, doubts, and fears. Cover well with the earth of fruitfulness. Water it from the well of contentment. Sow on top the seeds of hope, courage, strength, patience, and love. Then when the time for gathering comes, may your harvest be a rich and fruitful one.

When things are difficult, smile by faith. Don't wait until you feel better.

When the world is storm-driven and bad things happen, then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.

So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior. (68)

Life is a refining process. Our response to it determines whether we'll be ground down or polished up. On a piano, one person sits down and plays sonatas, while another merely bangs away at "Chopsticks." The piano is not responsible. It's how you touch the keys that makes the difference. It's how you play what life gives you that determines your joy and shine.

Let every hindrance to joy become the soil out of which joy blossoms.

I think positively, you can't harm me mentally, not physically, not spiritually, you'll never get rid of me.

The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... a man may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

Decide that no matter what is happening around you, the sun will always be shining in your world.

Those who are unconquered in spirit are the real successes in life. If you can so train or condition your mind that you are content regardless of what you have or do not have, and if you can stand the challenge of all your trials and remain calm-that is true happiness.