A Quote by Shunryu Suzuki

It is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strengths. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.

Shunryu Suzuki

Quote Topics

Accept Acquire Agreeable Causes Conditions Create Disagreeable Happiness Inherent Live Lives Only Our Our Lives Pain Practicing Situations Strengths Succession T Pain Through True True Strength Understanding

Quote Author

Shunryu Suzuki
Japanese - Leader
May 18, 1904 - December 4, 1971

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

Rebecca West

Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future.

Noah Levine

The pain does not bring perfection because the pain is from Satan. The Great Divine Reality is happiness, peace, abundance and perfection. The Great Reality can't create the pain. What is perfect can't create pain. What is perfect only conceives happiness.

Samael Aun Weor

We forget that we create the situations, then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for “we” are the only thinkers in our mind. We create our experiences, our reality, and everyone in it. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our mind, we will find it in our lives.

Louise Hay

Change requires leaving our comfort zones and plunging headfirst into uncomfortable situations. It's true this causes some pain and discomfort for a moment, but it's the quickest path to generating long-term fulfillment.

Yehuda Berg

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.

Shunryu Suzuki

The only hope for developing a new civilization is to accept responsibility for improving our lives through knowledge, understanding, and a deeper comprehension of humanity’s relationship to natural processes of evolution. Our future is determined by effort we put forth to achieve this transition.

Jacque Fresco

Thanksgiving is inseparable from true prayer; it is almost essentially connected with it. One who always prays is ever giving praise, whether in ease or pain, both for prosperity and for the greatest adversity. He blesses God for all things, looks on them as coming from Him, and receives them for His sake- not choosing nor refusing, liking or disliking,anything, but only as it is agreeable or disagreeable to His perfect will.

John Wesley

Ultimately our claim to know the one God only gains credence in the contemporary world as he demonstrates the divine presence through the way we live- through our lives as we connect our Christian belief with true Christian living.

Stanley J. Grenz

Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself - not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.

Peter Drucker

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle; easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we would still live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.

Irving Townsend

True happiness comes only through sharing in the trials and successes of other persons and of our community. Hence it is essential that any true conception of happiness contain the promise of full commitment to the life of the society.

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

Throughout human history, our greatest leaders and thinkers have used the power of words to transform our emotions, to enlist us in their causes, and to shape the course of destiny. Words can not only create emotions, they create actions. And from our actions flow the results of our lives.

Tony Robbins

There's a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite. And agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.

Jordan Peterson

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.