Great Throughts Treasury

"I have witnessed the softening of the hardest of hearts by a simple smile. Human kindness can turn armaments into armistice."

"We humans have the capacity to change the world with acts of love and kindness. Let’s start by teaching our children the importance of compassion."

"Comedy breaks down walls. It frees us for just a moment from the ugliness of this world."

"A person can't go wrong if they are prepared,"

"How long can you be cute?"

"I must say that the biggest lesson you can learn in life, or teach your children, is that life is not castles in the skies, happily ever after. The biggest lesson we have to give our children is truth. We're all built with illusions. And they break."

"All I ever wanted to be was happy."

"I noted that people are happy here in India. When I went back home, people had everything in the materialistic sense and were surrounded with abundance, but they were not happy."

"I speak from a deep place in my heart. We have to embrace obstacles to reach the next stage of joy."

"I wanted to investigate the nature of this joy."

"I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?"

"If we can just let go and trust that things will work out the way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself."

"If we cultivate compassion for those who have hurt us, we have the possibility of overcoming our anger, pain, and fear. Compassion is a great medicine."

"I'll have a lot of wrinkles on my face, but I feel like my heart will be fat and full."

"I'm not afraid of my femininity and I'm not afraid of my sexuality."

"It is not the question, what am I going to be when I grow up; you should ask the question, who am I going to be when I grow up."

"I'm a woman who was raised to believe that you are not complete unless you have a man. Well, in some ways it's true. I am a feminist to a point. But I'm not going to deny the fact that I love to be with men."

"My eyes are too big, my nose is too flat, my ears stick out, my mouth is too big and my face is too small... my body is thin as a clarinet and my ankles are so skinny that I wear two pairs of bobby socks because I don't want people to see how thin they are."

"I've finally stopped running away from myself. Who else is there better to be?"

"I've come to believe that seeking happiness is not a frivolous pursuit. It's honorable and necessary. And most people forget even to think about it."

"Life is a dance with the cosmos."

"Peter Sellers was great to work with. A lovely man. A little bit crazy in that he - you know, as I say, it was hard. It was sort of balancing a very delicate spirit on a needle. You know, because you never know where he was going."

"She needs to let go of all that blonde silliness and quit dressing like her daughter."

"So curiosity, I think, is a really important aspect of staying young or youthful."

"The biggest lesson we have to give our children is truth."

"The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one."

"Never apologize for your success because you worked hard for it."

"Once you laugh at you own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you're good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Maybe... combat some the ugliness in the world."

"Oh, but Ingrid Bergman is a woman's woman. I mean, she is everything a woman should be. She's the kind of woman men aren't afraid of because she's so warm. She has a real quality. It's too bad she isn't queen of some country."

"The movie actually has a little more back story, more consequence, and I think it's more real actually for this time period."

"The key is to learn to respect and honor the complications of other people's lives."

"The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are, and not who people think you are."

"Though she loses the ashes on the way, the film is about the meaningful lessons she finds instead."

"To find someone who loves your children like you do is really rare."

"There aren't many romantic comedies anymore that star just a female lead without being paired with a male lead."

"We have to embrace obstacles to reach the next stage of joy."

"Why not just live in the moment, especially if it has a good beat?"

"The smile you give is the smile you get back."

"When my mother was alive, I was the daughter first and everything else second.... That's what made her death so painful. My mother was a big part of my life and a big reason why I did what I did. I've always derived a lot of energy from being a good daughter.... When she was gone, I suddenly thought, Why am I doing this? For whom? Losing my mom was really hard on me. I remember going to the Academy Awards shortly after she died and thinking, Well I'm all dressed up, and my mother won't see me."

"You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it."

"Youthfulness is connected to the ability to see things new for the first time. So if your eyes still look at life with wonder, then you will seem young, even though you may not be chronologically young."

"You had a whole life's design, what motivated you when the negativity surrounded you?"