Theravada Buddhist Quotes & Sayings

I've lost, but I also gained a lot. I'm a creative person, and no one can take that away from me. I've been told I committed professional suicide because it was the only escape from the terrible pressures I was facing. What do you think? — John Galliano

With one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) that all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can. — Horatio Nelson

What sets Tibetan Buddhism apart from other Buddhist traditions - such as the Zen Buddhism of Japan or the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka - is that while Tibetans aim to become enlightened, they don't want to enter Nirvana. — Scott Carney

Truth" is coloured by perception. — Ellen Hopkins

Now the movie stars beg people to follow their Zing feeds. They send pleading messages asking everyone to smile at them. And holy fuck, the mailing lists! Everyone's a junk mailer. You know how I spend an hour every day? Thinking of ways to unsubscribe to mailing lists without hurting anyone's feelings. There's this new neediness - it pervades everything. — Dave Eggers

Yet there's no one to beat you | No one t' defeat you | 'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad — Bob Dylan

The information revolution will lead us through a knowledge revolution to the wisdom revolution. — Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

I always thought Uncle Vanya could be a stoned masterpiece. — Vera Farmiga

It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be expelled from the monastic community. The Buddha considered the embryo to be a person like an adult, so the monk who killed the embryo through abortion was judged by Buddhist monastic rules as having committed a crime equal in gravity to killing an adult. In the commentary on the rule stated above, it is stated clearly that killing a human being means destroying human life from the first moment of fertilization to human life outside the womb. So, even though the Buddha himself did not give a clear-cut pronouncement about when personhood occurs, the Buddhist tradition, especially the Theravada tradition, clearly states that personhood starts when the process of fertilization takes place. — Soraj Hongladarom