“Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”
― Ronald Reagan
“A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”
― Daisaku Ikeda, The Human Revolution
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.”
― John Lennon
“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth
“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
“Peace begins with a smile..”
― Mother Teresa
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Virginia Woolf
“Pain will leave you, when you let go”
― Jeremy Aldana
“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”
― Marianne Williamson
“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology
“A quiet conscience makes one strong!”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.”
― Marvin Gaye
“Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.”
― George Carlin
“It’s hard to hear over the racket of gunfire. Politicians want to talk about war, but the people want to talk about peace. ”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi
“The world is quiet here.”
― Lemony Snicket
“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. (21)”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
“The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease. ”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again
“He looked down at her. "Have you found that peace?"
Yes, she had. But it was so corny and cliched that she couldn't bring herself to admit it.
"A wise man once told me that peace has to come from within. We have to learn to like ourselves before we can find our place in the world.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, No Mercy
“Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred...”
― Yehuda Berg
“Part of me wants justice for this. Part of me wants to never cause harm to another.”
― Ken Scholes, Lamentation
“The greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live.”
― James Oliver Curwood, The Grizzly King
“Sex could be a blissful communion,. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace.”
― Ann Brashares, Girls In Pants: The Third Summer Of The Sisterhood
“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Adagia.
“To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
― John F. Kennedy
“Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness”
― Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry
“A feeling is not bottomless. once felt all the way through,a great peace greets you there”
― Alanis Morissette
“I don't remember Moses writing, 'Thou shalt not kill.. unless you think you have a good reason.”
― Willie Nelson, The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart [With Headphones]
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser.”
― William Shakespeare
“For you see, the face of destiny or luck or god that gives us war also gives us other kinds of pain: the loss of health and youth; the loss of loved ones or of love; the fear that we will end our days alone. Some people suffer in peace the way others suffer in war. The special gift of that suffering, I have learned, is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teach us forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace.”
― Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
“The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
“O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,
My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,
Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.
Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,
Confusions multiplied;
From crowding things of sense I flee, and Thee I hide.
Until this tyranny be overpast,
Thy hand will hold me fast;
What though the tumult of the storm increase,
Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace.”
― Amy Wilson-Carmichael, Toward Jerusalem
“It is our duty to ensure we have a peace worth fighting for.”
― Chris Bradford, The Way of the Dragon
“Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.”
― Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
“ The least known among the virtues and also the most misunderstood is the virtue of humility. Yet, it is the very groundwork of Christianity. Humility is a grace of the soul that cannot be expressed in words and is only known by experience. It is an unspeakable treasure of God, and only can be called the gift of God. "Learn," He said, not from angels, not from men, not from books; but learn from My presence, light, and action within you, "that I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest to your souls". ”
― William Bernard Ullathorne
“To Alef, the letter
that begins the alphabets
of both Arabic and Hebrew-
two Semitic languages,
sisters for centuries.
May we find the language
that takes us
to the only home there is -
one another's hearts.
...
Alef knows
That a thread
Of a story
Stitches together
A wound.”
― Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood
“Heaven on Earth, we need it now
I'm sick of all of this hanging around
Sick of sorrow, sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be peace on Earth...
...Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth
No whos or whys
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth”
― U2
“Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do,and something you give away. ”
― Robert Fulghum
“إن السلام لا يعنى الحب دائماً.. قد يعنى عدم الحرب كذلك”
― أحمد خالد توفيق, أسطورة النصف الآخر
“There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.”
― Havelock Ellis
“You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now.”
― Wayne W. Dyer
“Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Streams of Silver
“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.”
― Andrew Murray
“Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
“Peace and trust take years to build and seconds to shatter.”
― Mahogany SilverRain
“Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.”
― John Ortberg Jr., The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
“It is my conviction that there is no way to peace - peace is the way.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen
“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
― John F. Kennedy
“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”
― Albert Einstein
“I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent
“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
― Black Elk
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
― Anton Chekhov
“War is over ... If you want it.”
― John Lennon
“Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
“As much as it hurts, I would rather miss someone than hit someone.”
― Brian Celio
“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
― Amelia Earhart
“No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.”
― Herodotus, The Histories
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“One channel is the Stress Channel and the other is the Peace Channel. We really do have a choice about what we listen to. The Peace Channel can only be heard when we are present in the moment, when we are in the now. To tune in to the Peace Channel, all we have to do is be, experience, notice, and naturally respond to what is arising in the moment. To tune into the Stress Channel, we just have to start believing our thoughts again. [...] Eliminating stress is just a matter of tuning out the negative and tuning in the positive and just being, experiencing, and dancing to that music instead of the mind's chatter.”
― Gina Lake, What about Now?
“No more quickly can a person rob you of your joy and peace than when that individual succeeds at making you feel like you're less than worthy of God as compared to his/her own self. The old adage "You're on your way to hell, and I'm on my way to heaven" spoken or implied to another, is the most predominantly effective way to make someone feel better about himself; and he doesn't even have to prove he's better in this life on earth because now he can just say "Wait 'til I'm looking down at you while you're in hell!" But don't be robbed of your joy and peace, individuals or groups of people like that don't know where God is; He is a whisper-distance away from you, is all.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“We can make room for more experiences of radiance, peace, and beauty; and when we do, they arrive. When we make an intention to experience peace, when we value it enough to make room for it and invite it into our busy lives, it arrives bearing gifts. We make room for this guest, not by doing anything, but by just being, just allowing ourselves to rest, once and for all, in this sweet moment with no agenda, no purpose, no reason, but just to experience the moment as it is. We make room for peace and happiness by just noticing them. We notice that they are already here, and noticing them brings them more strongly into focus. Peace and happiness are always here, but they often go unnoticed.”
― Gina Lake, What about Now?
“The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette
“Peace is only a thought away.”
― Jill Bolte Taylor
“Nobody could rule this world merely by peace.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
“My mom and dad refused to believe that people who had grown up together in peace and friendship, had gone to the same schools, spoken the same language, and listened to the same music, could overnight be blinded by ethnic hatred and start to brutally kill one another. They simply didn't accept as true that less than two years of a multiparty system and competition for power could poison people's brains so much.”
― Savo Heleta, Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia
“An evil can only be killed by another kind of evil,
because the pure spirit of peace can not do killing.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“And now, dear Lord, I acknowledge afresh that You are the God of all peace, my Jehovah-Shalom. My job is to receive. you give me Your peace. My job is to take it. You lead me to Your still waters. My role is to follow. You extend Your hand. My role is to take hold. My I enjoy Your presence and the tranquility of the still waters where You pour out your promise of peace. Amen.”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“I’d start a war just to illustrate the value of peace. ”
― Jarod Kintz
“The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.”
― Jeannette Rankin
“Peace comes at a price, often only at the end of a hard-fought battle.”
― Toni Sorenson
“Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.”
― Gary L. Francione
“True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.”
― Pope John Paul II
“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
― Thomas Merton
“In the heartfelt mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will visit us, to shine on those sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death, to guide our feet to the way of peace.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
“Peace and love, peace and love!”
― Ringo Starr
“Action is the foundational key to all success. ”
― Pablo Picasso
“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”
― Mark Twain
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama
“Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.”
― Jean Vanier, Finding Peace
“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.”
― Matthew Henry
“Peace can happen in 24 hours....just like war can happen in 24 hours.”
― Sari Nusseibeh
“Having beef with someone is unnecessary and avoidable. Whatever the issue, if not positive, it is an opportunity to cut the excess fat from an unhealthy dietary network. Simply excuse yourself from the table of negativity and lean forward in peace.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
“Peace is not an easy prospect--it requires greater bravery than does conflict.”
― Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
― Thomas Paine
“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
― Bertrand Russell
“It was entirely silent and I tried to breathe its peace.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Engleby
“There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering.”
― François Fénelon
“Man invents war. Man discovers peace. He invents war from without. He discovers peace from within. War man throws. Peace man sows. The smile of war is the flood of human blood. The smile of peace is the love, below, above.”
― Sri Chinmoy
“True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice.”
― Jane Addams
“If you are a Buddhist, inspire yourself by thinking of the bodhisattva. If you are a Christian, think of the Christ, who came not to be served by others but to serve them in joy, in peace, and in generosity. For these things, these are not mere words, but acts, which go all the way, right up to their last breath. Even their death is a gift, and resurrection is born from this kind of death. (157)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic Between Buddhism and Christianity
“The more we genuinely care about others the greater our own happiness & inner peace.”
― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
“Peace at home, peace in the world.”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”
― John Pilger
“May our daily choices be a reflection of our deepest values, and may we use our voices to speak for those who need us most, those who have no voice, those who have no choice.”
― Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Vegan's Daily Companion: 365 Days of Inspiration for Cooking, Eating, and Living Compassionately
“To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. it all becomes a question of style.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935 1942
“Shall I tell you why young men love war? . . . In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one question with one right answer. . . . Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.”
― Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace
“The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose; do not like, do not dislike: All will then be clear.”
― Seng Ts'an
“Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?" (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)”
― John F. Kennedy
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1918)”
― Nelson Mandela
“The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything.”
― Julien Smith, The Flinch
“Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.”
― Dean Koontz, Chase
“One who will not accept solitude, stillness and quiet recurring moments...is caught up in the wilderness of addictions; far removed from an original state of being and awareness. This is 'dis-ease.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.
When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.”
― Sathya Sai Baba
“We should use our imagination more than our memory.”
― Shimon Peres
“In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.”
― Herodotus
“But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)”
― John F. Kennedy
“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.”
― Ronald Reagan, The Quest for Peace, the Cause of Freedom
“The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Let the peace of this day be here tomorrow when I wake up.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
“Grant that I may radiate Thy Light, Thy Love,
Thy Healing, Thy Joy, and Thy Peace
to all those around me
and all those in my thoughts
this day and ever more.”
― Jonathan Lockwood Huie
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
“Everything will be alright in the end. If it's not alright, it's not the end...”
― Alexandria.
“Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace”
― Thomas Jefferson
“Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31”
― Thomas Merton, On Non-Violence
“She had storms all her life, but she died peacefully.”
― Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, 1925-1939
“I am not blaming the past. ... But I want the peace of God to settle on the future.”
― Benjamin Jowett
“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”
― Leo Tolstoy
“If you divide the world into them and us, and history into ours and theirs, or if you think of history as something only you and your affiliates possess, then no matter what you know, no matter how noble your intentions, you have taken one step toward the destruction of the world.”
― Robert Bringhurst, The Tree Of Meaning: Thirteen Talks
“Do you want to be safe from the influence, ways, and lusts of the world and the flesh (I John 2:16)? From the sins which so easily entangles us (Hebrews 12:1)? Then delight in yourself in the Lord, in His provision, in His Word. Faithfully feed on the things that possess true substance and real meaning. When you remember that "all Scripture is given by inspiration by God and is profitable" (2 Timothy 3:16) and partake of such divine substance, then you are fed, you are led and you are safe!”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“What a blessing to be able to leave the cares of life for a brief period and spend time in the outstretched arms of your Shepherd, rubbing, as it were, your cheek against His face in intimate fellowship through prayer.”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace--the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.”
― Catherine Drinker Bowen, Friends and Fiddlers: Memoirs
“Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”
― Malcolm X
“You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”
― David Baldacci, The Camel Club
“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
― Albert Schweitzer
“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.”
― Roberto Bolaño
“There is no 'way to peace,' there is only 'peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“How come we play war and not peace?"
"Too few role models.”
― Bill Watterson
“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then to put it away.”
― Virginia Woolf
“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens”
― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within
“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
― Eckhart Tolle
“World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
“Peace is always beautiful.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
“Even if things don't unfold the way you expected, don't be disheartened or give up. One who continues to advance will win in the end.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace”
― Mother Teresa
“Peace is the only battle worth waging.”
― Albert Camus
“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”
― William Wilberforce
“Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
― William Wordsworth, I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud
“Even the smallest act of caring for another person is like a drop of water -it will make ripples throughout the entire pond...”
― Jessy and Bryan Matteo
“In this world, unity is achievable only by learning to unite in spite of differences, rather than insisting on unity without differences. For their total eradication is an impossibility. The secret of attaining peace in life is tolerance of disturbance of the peace. (p. 99)”
― Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, The True Jihad: The Concept of Peace, Tolerance and Non Violence in Islam
“Writing is hard. Not as hard as not writing.
Not writing is torturous, bloody, chaotic and a gruesome winless battle.
A writer who writes, knows peace, lives connected to truth.
Not writing is ache, betrayal, death of the soul and imagination.”
― Coco J. Ginger
“John Smith: Mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour. Let's hope that from now on this country can find its heroes in smaller places. In the most ordinary of deeds.”
― Paul Cornell
“Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other's souls and foster mutual understanding.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours," muttered Locke, pointing the first two fingers of his left hand into the darkness. The Dagger of the Thirteenth, a thief's gesture against evil. "Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend."
"Bless the Benefactor," said Jean, squeezing Locke's left forearm. "Peace and profit to his children.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies
“Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.”
― Ronald Reagan, The Quest for Peace, the Cause of Freedom
“The person who hurt you--who raped you or killed your family--is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain.”
― Leymah Gbowee, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War
“Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.”
― Hans Margolius
“Price of peace could only be valued by
people who had suffered loss in the war.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”
― William Ewart Gladstone
“But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?"
So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
“World-peace can be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power.”
― Sri Chinmoy
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
― Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
“Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?”
― Noam Chomsky
“Truth often sacrificed for the sake of stability and peace.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“That deep silence has a melody of its own, a sweetness unknown amid the harsh discords of the world's sounds.”
― Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton
“Many people think excitement is happiness.... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
“Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone
“For a day, just for one day,
Talk about that which disturbs no one
And bring some peace into your
Beautiful eyes.”
― حافظ, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz
“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”
― Aristotle
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one”
― John Lennon, Imagine
“When Great Trees Fall
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
― Maya Angelou
“When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”
― Jeanne DuPrau, The People of Sparks
“Welfare reforms and the whole “happy” exploitation movement are not “baby steps.” They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction.”
― Gary L. Francione
“How many fears came between us?
Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell
rained smoldering pus
from skies made of winged death.
Horror tore this world asunder.
While inside the bleeding smoke
and beyond the shredded weeping flesh
we memorized tales of infinite good.
--from The History Lesson”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
“Peace would always be less compelling than war. Perhaps that was why there was so little of it in the world. (p. 160)”
― Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan: A Man to Match His Mountains
“We got a fightin' side a mile wide, but we pray for peace 'cause it's mostly us that end up servin' overseas.”
― Josh Thompson
“Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend.”
― Albert Camus
“Being a senior doesn't automatically make one wise but the wise & foolish alike have things to teach us.”
― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
― Pythagoras
“Don't Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold.”
― Bob Marley
“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.”
― John Lennon
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
― Albert Einstein
“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
― Fred Rogers
“If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.”
― John Lennon
“Is it not better for a man to die for a cause in which he believes, such as peace, than to suffer for a cause in which he does not believe, such as war?”
― Albert Einstein
“Those who believe and their hearts become calm and contented with the remembrance of Allah...know that it is the remembrance of Allah alone that brings rest to the hearts.
(The Qur'an-surah ar-R'ad;28)”
― Anonymous
“... there's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.”
― Rob Schultheis, Fool's Gold: Lives, Loves, and Misadventures in the Four Corners Country
“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
― Gary Zukav
“Your words will either give you joy or give you sorrow. But if they were spoken without regret they give you peace.”
― Shannon Alder
“One in All
All in One--
If only this is realized,
No more worry about your not being perfect (175)”
― Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures
“If you meet an angel, you will have not peace, but a fever.”
― Stefano Benni, Margherita Dolce Vita
“Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
“A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.”
― Marion Dane Bauer, Am I Blue?: Coming Out From the Silence
“Friede – wie Freundschaft – setzt Achtung voraus.”
― Johannes Müller
“To die,
so young to die.
No, no, not I,
I love the warm sunny skies,
light, song, shining eyes,
I want no war, no battle cry,
No, no, not I.”
― Hannah Senesh
“The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.”
― Thomas More
“Let us feel love, in the sight of our foes.
Let our hearts melt, of the sight of hungry ones.
Let us sing the music of forgiveness,
the melody of love.”
― M.Padua
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
“Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.”
― Homer, The Odyssey
“With the help of the Lord, you can handle life's challenges and heartaches, even the valley of the shadow of death. What comfort your fainting heart has, knowing that in those stumbling times of discouragement and despair, of depletion and seeming defeat, the Shepherd will find you...restore and "fix" you...and follow you...until you are well on your way.”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“There's an non-existent peace in the uncertain quietness”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa
“To allow oneself to be carried away
By a multitude of conflicting concerns,
To surrender to too many demands,
...To commit oneself to too many projects,
To want to help everyone with everything
Is to succumb to violence.”
― Thomas Merton
“Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Peace and rest at length have come
All the day's long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, 'Home,
Home at last.”
― Thomas Hood
“When nations resort to arms, the human spirit is like a bird that cannot stand to hear its own song.”
― Phoenix Desmond, Make Love to the Universe: Himalayan Masters Share Spiritual Wisdom
“The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.”
― Mark Skousen
“We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath.”
― Lawrence Binyon
“Prayer is vastly superior to worry. With worry, we are helpless; with prayer, we are interceding. When I hear sad news, I try to say a prayer for the victims. When I am troubled, I will say a prayer that asks for relief for myself and for all those who suffer as I do. When I am concerned about my relatives or friends I say a short prayer to myself - "May they be happy and free of suffering." Book: Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddist in the World”
― Mary Bray Pipher
“Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.”
― Michael Moorcock, The Elric Saga Part I
“[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love.
When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action.
She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.”
― Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies
“Im Krieg machen die Starken die Schwachen zu Sklaven, im Frieden machen die Reichen die Armen zu Sklaven.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Young King and Other Stories
“The line between him and the enemy had simultaneously blurred and solidified. Somehow, while perhaps it shouldn't have, this thought provided a strange sense of peace.”
― Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
“I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
“What you mean by 'peace' is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly.”
― Hayao Miyazaki via God warrior Ohma, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 7
“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.”
― Dave Barry
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.”
― Milan Kundera
― Ronald Reagan
“A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”
― Daisaku Ikeda, The Human Revolution
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.”
― John Lennon
“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth
“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
“Peace begins with a smile..”
― Mother Teresa
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Virginia Woolf
“Pain will leave you, when you let go”
― Jeremy Aldana
“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”
― Marianne Williamson
“By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology
“A quiet conscience makes one strong!”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.”
― Marvin Gaye
“Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.”
― George Carlin
“It’s hard to hear over the racket of gunfire. Politicians want to talk about war, but the people want to talk about peace. ”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi
“The world is quiet here.”
― Lemony Snicket
“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. (21)”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
“The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease. ”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again
“He looked down at her. "Have you found that peace?"
Yes, she had. But it was so corny and cliched that she couldn't bring herself to admit it.
"A wise man once told me that peace has to come from within. We have to learn to like ourselves before we can find our place in the world.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, No Mercy
“Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred...”
― Yehuda Berg
“Part of me wants justice for this. Part of me wants to never cause harm to another.”
― Ken Scholes, Lamentation
“The greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live.”
― James Oliver Curwood, The Grizzly King
“Sex could be a blissful communion,. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace.”
― Ann Brashares, Girls In Pants: The Third Summer Of The Sisterhood
“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, Adagia.
“To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
― John F. Kennedy
“Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness”
― Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry
“A feeling is not bottomless. once felt all the way through,a great peace greets you there”
― Alanis Morissette
“I don't remember Moses writing, 'Thou shalt not kill.. unless you think you have a good reason.”
― Willie Nelson, The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart [With Headphones]
“A peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser.”
― William Shakespeare
“For you see, the face of destiny or luck or god that gives us war also gives us other kinds of pain: the loss of health and youth; the loss of loved ones or of love; the fear that we will end our days alone. Some people suffer in peace the way others suffer in war. The special gift of that suffering, I have learned, is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teach us forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace.”
― Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
“The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
“O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,
My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,
Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.
Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,
Confusions multiplied;
From crowding things of sense I flee, and Thee I hide.
Until this tyranny be overpast,
Thy hand will hold me fast;
What though the tumult of the storm increase,
Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace.”
― Amy Wilson-Carmichael, Toward Jerusalem
“It is our duty to ensure we have a peace worth fighting for.”
― Chris Bradford, The Way of the Dragon
“Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.”
― Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
“ The least known among the virtues and also the most misunderstood is the virtue of humility. Yet, it is the very groundwork of Christianity. Humility is a grace of the soul that cannot be expressed in words and is only known by experience. It is an unspeakable treasure of God, and only can be called the gift of God. "Learn," He said, not from angels, not from men, not from books; but learn from My presence, light, and action within you, "that I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest to your souls". ”
― William Bernard Ullathorne
“To Alef, the letter
that begins the alphabets
of both Arabic and Hebrew-
two Semitic languages,
sisters for centuries.
May we find the language
that takes us
to the only home there is -
one another's hearts.
...
Alef knows
That a thread
Of a story
Stitches together
A wound.”
― Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood
“Heaven on Earth, we need it now
I'm sick of all of this hanging around
Sick of sorrow, sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be peace on Earth...
...Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth
No whos or whys
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth”
― U2
“Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do,and something you give away. ”
― Robert Fulghum
“إن السلام لا يعنى الحب دائماً.. قد يعنى عدم الحرب كذلك”
― أحمد خالد توفيق, أسطورة النصف الآخر
“There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.”
― Havelock Ellis
“You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now.”
― Wayne W. Dyer
“Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure.”
― R.A. Salvatore, Streams of Silver
“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.”
― Andrew Murray
“Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
“Peace and trust take years to build and seconds to shatter.”
― Mahogany SilverRain
“Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend... The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear -- because peace and fear are both contagious.”
― John Ortberg Jr., The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
“It is my conviction that there is no way to peace - peace is the way.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen
“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
― John F. Kennedy
“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”
― Albert Einstein
“I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent
“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
― Black Elk
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
― Anton Chekhov
“War is over ... If you want it.”
― John Lennon
“Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
“As much as it hurts, I would rather miss someone than hit someone.”
― Brian Celio
“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
― Amelia Earhart
“No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.”
― Herodotus, The Histories
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
“One channel is the Stress Channel and the other is the Peace Channel. We really do have a choice about what we listen to. The Peace Channel can only be heard when we are present in the moment, when we are in the now. To tune in to the Peace Channel, all we have to do is be, experience, notice, and naturally respond to what is arising in the moment. To tune into the Stress Channel, we just have to start believing our thoughts again. [...] Eliminating stress is just a matter of tuning out the negative and tuning in the positive and just being, experiencing, and dancing to that music instead of the mind's chatter.”
― Gina Lake, What about Now?
“No more quickly can a person rob you of your joy and peace than when that individual succeeds at making you feel like you're less than worthy of God as compared to his/her own self. The old adage "You're on your way to hell, and I'm on my way to heaven" spoken or implied to another, is the most predominantly effective way to make someone feel better about himself; and he doesn't even have to prove he's better in this life on earth because now he can just say "Wait 'til I'm looking down at you while you're in hell!" But don't be robbed of your joy and peace, individuals or groups of people like that don't know where God is; He is a whisper-distance away from you, is all.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“We can make room for more experiences of radiance, peace, and beauty; and when we do, they arrive. When we make an intention to experience peace, when we value it enough to make room for it and invite it into our busy lives, it arrives bearing gifts. We make room for this guest, not by doing anything, but by just being, just allowing ourselves to rest, once and for all, in this sweet moment with no agenda, no purpose, no reason, but just to experience the moment as it is. We make room for peace and happiness by just noticing them. We notice that they are already here, and noticing them brings them more strongly into focus. Peace and happiness are always here, but they often go unnoticed.”
― Gina Lake, What about Now?
“The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette
“Peace is only a thought away.”
― Jill Bolte Taylor
“Nobody could rule this world merely by peace.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
“My mom and dad refused to believe that people who had grown up together in peace and friendship, had gone to the same schools, spoken the same language, and listened to the same music, could overnight be blinded by ethnic hatred and start to brutally kill one another. They simply didn't accept as true that less than two years of a multiparty system and competition for power could poison people's brains so much.”
― Savo Heleta, Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia
“An evil can only be killed by another kind of evil,
because the pure spirit of peace can not do killing.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“And now, dear Lord, I acknowledge afresh that You are the God of all peace, my Jehovah-Shalom. My job is to receive. you give me Your peace. My job is to take it. You lead me to Your still waters. My role is to follow. You extend Your hand. My role is to take hold. My I enjoy Your presence and the tranquility of the still waters where You pour out your promise of peace. Amen.”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“I’d start a war just to illustrate the value of peace. ”
― Jarod Kintz
“The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.”
― Jeannette Rankin
“Peace comes at a price, often only at the end of a hard-fought battle.”
― Toni Sorenson
“Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.”
― Gary L. Francione
“True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.”
― Pope John Paul II
“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
― Thomas Merton
“In the heartfelt mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will visit us, to shine on those sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death, to guide our feet to the way of peace.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
“Peace and love, peace and love!”
― Ringo Starr
“Action is the foundational key to all success. ”
― Pablo Picasso
“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”
― Mark Twain
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama
“Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.”
― Jean Vanier, Finding Peace
“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.”
― Matthew Henry
“Peace can happen in 24 hours....just like war can happen in 24 hours.”
― Sari Nusseibeh
“Having beef with someone is unnecessary and avoidable. Whatever the issue, if not positive, it is an opportunity to cut the excess fat from an unhealthy dietary network. Simply excuse yourself from the table of negativity and lean forward in peace.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
“Peace is not an easy prospect--it requires greater bravery than does conflict.”
― Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
― Thomas Paine
“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
― Bertrand Russell
“It was entirely silent and I tried to breathe its peace.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Engleby
“There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering.”
― François Fénelon
“Man invents war. Man discovers peace. He invents war from without. He discovers peace from within. War man throws. Peace man sows. The smile of war is the flood of human blood. The smile of peace is the love, below, above.”
― Sri Chinmoy
“True peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice.”
― Jane Addams
“If you are a Buddhist, inspire yourself by thinking of the bodhisattva. If you are a Christian, think of the Christ, who came not to be served by others but to serve them in joy, in peace, and in generosity. For these things, these are not mere words, but acts, which go all the way, right up to their last breath. Even their death is a gift, and resurrection is born from this kind of death. (157)”
― Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic Between Buddhism and Christianity
“The more we genuinely care about others the greater our own happiness & inner peace.”
― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
“Peace at home, peace in the world.”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”
― John Pilger
“May our daily choices be a reflection of our deepest values, and may we use our voices to speak for those who need us most, those who have no voice, those who have no choice.”
― Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Vegan's Daily Companion: 365 Days of Inspiration for Cooking, Eating, and Living Compassionately
“To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. it all becomes a question of style.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935 1942
“Shall I tell you why young men love war? . . . In peace, there are a hundred questions with a thousand answers! In war, there is only one question with one right answer. . . . Going to war makes you a man. It is emotionally exciting and morally restful.”
― Mary Doria Russell, A Thread of Grace
“The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose; do not like, do not dislike: All will then be clear.”
― Seng Ts'an
“Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation – the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence?" (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)”
― John F. Kennedy
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1918)”
― Nelson Mandela
“The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything.”
― Julien Smith, The Flinch
“Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.”
― Dean Koontz, Chase
“One who will not accept solitude, stillness and quiet recurring moments...is caught up in the wilderness of addictions; far removed from an original state of being and awareness. This is 'dis-ease.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
“If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.
When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.”
― Sathya Sai Baba
“We should use our imagination more than our memory.”
― Shimon Peres
“In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.”
― Herodotus
“But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete." (John F. Kennedy, June 10, 1963, American University speech)”
― John F. Kennedy
“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.”
― Ronald Reagan, The Quest for Peace, the Cause of Freedom
“The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Let the peace of this day be here tomorrow when I wake up.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
“Grant that I may radiate Thy Light, Thy Love,
Thy Healing, Thy Joy, and Thy Peace
to all those around me
and all those in my thoughts
this day and ever more.”
― Jonathan Lockwood Huie
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
“Everything will be alright in the end. If it's not alright, it's not the end...”
― Alexandria.
“Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace”
― Thomas Jefferson
“Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31”
― Thomas Merton, On Non-Violence
“She had storms all her life, but she died peacefully.”
― Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday, 1925-1939
“I am not blaming the past. ... But I want the peace of God to settle on the future.”
― Benjamin Jowett
“And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.”
― Leo Tolstoy
“If you divide the world into them and us, and history into ours and theirs, or if you think of history as something only you and your affiliates possess, then no matter what you know, no matter how noble your intentions, you have taken one step toward the destruction of the world.”
― Robert Bringhurst, The Tree Of Meaning: Thirteen Talks
“Do you want to be safe from the influence, ways, and lusts of the world and the flesh (I John 2:16)? From the sins which so easily entangles us (Hebrews 12:1)? Then delight in yourself in the Lord, in His provision, in His Word. Faithfully feed on the things that possess true substance and real meaning. When you remember that "all Scripture is given by inspiration by God and is profitable" (2 Timothy 3:16) and partake of such divine substance, then you are fed, you are led and you are safe!”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“What a blessing to be able to leave the cares of life for a brief period and spend time in the outstretched arms of your Shepherd, rubbing, as it were, your cheek against His face in intimate fellowship through prayer.”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace--the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.”
― Catherine Drinker Bowen, Friends and Fiddlers: Memoirs
“Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”
― Malcolm X
“You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”
― David Baldacci, The Camel Club
“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
― Albert Schweitzer
“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.”
― Roberto Bolaño
“There is no 'way to peace,' there is only 'peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“How come we play war and not peace?"
"Too few role models.”
― Bill Watterson
“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then to put it away.”
― Virginia Woolf
“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens”
― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within
“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
― Eckhart Tolle
“World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
“Peace is always beautiful.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
“Even if things don't unfold the way you expected, don't be disheartened or give up. One who continues to advance will win in the end.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace”
― Mother Teresa
“Peace is the only battle worth waging.”
― Albert Camus
“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”
― William Wilberforce
“Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
― William Wordsworth, I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud
“Even the smallest act of caring for another person is like a drop of water -it will make ripples throughout the entire pond...”
― Jessy and Bryan Matteo
“In this world, unity is achievable only by learning to unite in spite of differences, rather than insisting on unity without differences. For their total eradication is an impossibility. The secret of attaining peace in life is tolerance of disturbance of the peace. (p. 99)”
― Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, The True Jihad: The Concept of Peace, Tolerance and Non Violence in Islam
“Writing is hard. Not as hard as not writing.
Not writing is torturous, bloody, chaotic and a gruesome winless battle.
A writer who writes, knows peace, lives connected to truth.
Not writing is ache, betrayal, death of the soul and imagination.”
― Coco J. Ginger
“John Smith: Mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour. Let's hope that from now on this country can find its heroes in smaller places. In the most ordinary of deeds.”
― Paul Cornell
“Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other's souls and foster mutual understanding.”
― Daisaku Ikeda
“Crooked Warden, I will fear no darkness for the night is yours," muttered Locke, pointing the first two fingers of his left hand into the darkness. The Dagger of the Thirteenth, a thief's gesture against evil. "Your night is my cloak, my shield, my escape from those who hunt to feed the noose. I will fear no evil, for you have made the night my friend."
"Bless the Benefactor," said Jean, squeezing Locke's left forearm. "Peace and profit to his children.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies
“Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.”
― Ronald Reagan, The Quest for Peace, the Cause of Freedom
“The person who hurt you--who raped you or killed your family--is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain.”
― Leymah Gbowee, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War
“Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.”
― Hans Margolius
“Price of peace could only be valued by
people who had suffered loss in the war.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”
― William Ewart Gladstone
“But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?"
So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
“World-peace can be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power.”
― Sri Chinmoy
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
― Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
“Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?”
― Noam Chomsky
“Truth often sacrificed for the sake of stability and peace.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
“That deep silence has a melody of its own, a sweetness unknown amid the harsh discords of the world's sounds.”
― Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton
“Many people think excitement is happiness.... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
“Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone
“For a day, just for one day,
Talk about that which disturbs no one
And bring some peace into your
Beautiful eyes.”
― حافظ, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz
“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”
― Aristotle
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one”
― John Lennon, Imagine
“When Great Trees Fall
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
― Maya Angelou
“When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”
― Jeanne DuPrau, The People of Sparks
“Welfare reforms and the whole “happy” exploitation movement are not “baby steps.” They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction.”
― Gary L. Francione
“How many fears came between us?
Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell
rained smoldering pus
from skies made of winged death.
Horror tore this world asunder.
While inside the bleeding smoke
and beyond the shredded weeping flesh
we memorized tales of infinite good.
--from The History Lesson”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
“Peace would always be less compelling than war. Perhaps that was why there was so little of it in the world. (p. 160)”
― Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan: A Man to Match His Mountains
“We got a fightin' side a mile wide, but we pray for peace 'cause it's mostly us that end up servin' overseas.”
― Josh Thompson
“Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend.”
― Albert Camus
“Being a senior doesn't automatically make one wise but the wise & foolish alike have things to teach us.”
― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
― Pythagoras
“Don't Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold.”
― Bob Marley
“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.”
― John Lennon
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
― Albert Einstein
“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
― Fred Rogers
“If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.”
― John Lennon
“Is it not better for a man to die for a cause in which he believes, such as peace, than to suffer for a cause in which he does not believe, such as war?”
― Albert Einstein
“Those who believe and their hearts become calm and contented with the remembrance of Allah...know that it is the remembrance of Allah alone that brings rest to the hearts.
(The Qur'an-surah ar-R'ad;28)”
― Anonymous
“... there's a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.”
― Rob Schultheis, Fool's Gold: Lives, Loves, and Misadventures in the Four Corners Country
“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
― Gary Zukav
“Your words will either give you joy or give you sorrow. But if they were spoken without regret they give you peace.”
― Shannon Alder
“One in All
All in One--
If only this is realized,
No more worry about your not being perfect (175)”
― Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures
“If you meet an angel, you will have not peace, but a fever.”
― Stefano Benni, Margherita Dolce Vita
“Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
“A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.”
― Marion Dane Bauer, Am I Blue?: Coming Out From the Silence
“Friede – wie Freundschaft – setzt Achtung voraus.”
― Johannes Müller
“To die,
so young to die.
No, no, not I,
I love the warm sunny skies,
light, song, shining eyes,
I want no war, no battle cry,
No, no, not I.”
― Hannah Senesh
“The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.”
― Thomas More
“Let us feel love, in the sight of our foes.
Let our hearts melt, of the sight of hungry ones.
Let us sing the music of forgiveness,
the melody of love.”
― M.Padua
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
“Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.”
― Homer, The Odyssey
“With the help of the Lord, you can handle life's challenges and heartaches, even the valley of the shadow of death. What comfort your fainting heart has, knowing that in those stumbling times of discouragement and despair, of depletion and seeming defeat, the Shepherd will find you...restore and "fix" you...and follow you...until you are well on your way.”
― Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
“There's an non-existent peace in the uncertain quietness”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa
“To allow oneself to be carried away
By a multitude of conflicting concerns,
To surrender to too many demands,
...To commit oneself to too many projects,
To want to help everyone with everything
Is to succumb to violence.”
― Thomas Merton
“Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Peace and rest at length have come
All the day's long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, 'Home,
Home at last.”
― Thomas Hood
“When nations resort to arms, the human spirit is like a bird that cannot stand to hear its own song.”
― Phoenix Desmond, Make Love to the Universe: Himalayan Masters Share Spiritual Wisdom
“The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society.”
― Mark Skousen
“We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath.”
― Lawrence Binyon
“Prayer is vastly superior to worry. With worry, we are helpless; with prayer, we are interceding. When I hear sad news, I try to say a prayer for the victims. When I am troubled, I will say a prayer that asks for relief for myself and for all those who suffer as I do. When I am concerned about my relatives or friends I say a short prayer to myself - "May they be happy and free of suffering." Book: Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddist in the World”
― Mary Bray Pipher
“Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.”
― Michael Moorcock, The Elric Saga Part I
“[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love.
When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action.
She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.”
― Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies
“Im Krieg machen die Starken die Schwachen zu Sklaven, im Frieden machen die Reichen die Armen zu Sklaven.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Young King and Other Stories
“The line between him and the enemy had simultaneously blurred and solidified. Somehow, while perhaps it shouldn't have, this thought provided a strange sense of peace.”
― Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
“I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
“What you mean by 'peace' is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly.”
― Hayao Miyazaki via God warrior Ohma, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 7
“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.”
― Dave Barry
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.”
― Milan Kundera
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