Richard Wright Quotes

I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.

With that, I splashed some water on my face, fixed on a smile, and stepped out. I would find Jerome. I would make him explain to me what I was missing. We would laugh, then we would kiss with tongue, and all would be well.

I use the word inquiry as synonymous with The Work...Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside us.

Look at your heart-flower and smile. You will be able to solve your most pressing problems.

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others. Inner peace is not found by staying on the surface of life, or by attempting to escape from life through any means. Inner peace is found by facing life squarely, solving its problems, and delving as far beneath its surface as possible to discover its verities and realities.

There are other kinds of emotional pain that emerge from our own mistaken thinking. As we surrender that pain, we are inviting into our thought system a guide who will lead us to different thoughts. It’s like the song “Amazing Grace”: I was blind and now I see.

Part of you just has to be in service of processing things and getting them out.

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

I have to move away from organized religion. The toxic confusion and anger I was feeling in church had become too great.

Recording happiness made it last longer, we felt, and recording sorrow dramatized it and took away its bitterness; and often we settled some problem which beset us even while we wrote about it.

People who know the state of emptiness will always be able to dissolve their problems by constancy.

When there is pain, the animal instinct is 'fight or flight' (i.e., to either strike back or run away) - reflect instead. When you can calm yourself down, thinking about the dilemma that is causing you pain will bring you to a higher level and enlighten you, leading to progress.

Wash the dust from your SOUl and HEART with wisdom's WATER.

Meditation is the calm in the chaos, the fastest way to settle down and get in touch with the stillness within.

Silence is a solvent that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and universal.

I try to give as much blanket forgiveness as much as possible in my life because that's the only way you can get past things and move forward. But, conversely, I'd like to be forgiven. In many ways, that's the bigger leap, the bigger transformation and the bigger step forward.

Nothing in my life is going right, right now and there's got to be a reason for that. I think that God is trying to get my attention to tell me that this is going to end very, very badly if I don't walk away from it.

The best way to GET forgiveness is to GIVE forgiveness.

It is when judgment ceases that healing occurs.

It's okay to be confused. Confusion is the route to all the clarity in the world.

I think there are more people waiting to forgive me than I need to forgive them.

Meditation puts into question more or less everything you tend to do in your search for happiness. But if you lose sight of this, it can become just another strategy for seeking happiness - a more refined version of the problem you already have.