If you try to find the bad in someone you will always succeed; but you will also find yourself unhappy and always alone.
Don't look so much at the bad, everyone has their low points; love them for the good you find in them.
"Everything is as it is. It has no name other than what we give to it.
It is we who call it something; we give it value. We say this thing is good or it's bad, but in itself,
the thing is only as it is. It's not absolute; it's just as it is. People are just as they are."
- Ajahn Sumdho, The Mind and the Way
"For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don't. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them."
I do not love “good” more than I love “bad.” Hitler went to heaven. When you understand this, you will understand God.
No clever arrangement of bad eggs will make a good omelet.
'The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said, 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and there are bad deeds. Men are just men--it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good or evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone--the noblest of man alive or the most wicked--has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.'
“Looking for the good in everything is equally as misguided as looking for the bad in everything.â€
if it ever seems to us that the world is a place where bad things only happen to good people, it is because we still believe that bad things happening to bad people is a good thing.
Anything bad you say or do today can be used against you, anything good will be forgotten
if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.
The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings
should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
An ancient Chinese story tells of a farmer who owns a famous racehorse. One day, the horse ran away. His friends commiserated with him, but the farmer replied, “This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” Soon, his horse returned and brought another fine-looking horse. His friends congratulated him, but the farmer observed, “This isn’t necessarily a good thing.” Later, the farmer’s son is thrown while trying to tame the new horse. He broke his leg, which left him lame. The farmer’s friends offered condolences, but he responded, “This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” Sure enough, war broke out and the son’s lameness prevented him from being conscripted. Though many neighbors’ sons were killed in the fighting, the farmer’s son was spared. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s bad.
There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances.
