Ajahn Chah Quotes

Just go into the room, sit in the centre of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.

Ajahn Chah

• Kind
• Understanding
• Meditation
• Temptation
• Window

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Quotes to Explore

• So much of writing isn't the fun parts like we get to discuss. It is sitting there putting the words down.

  

  Hanya Yanagihara
  • Writing
  • Fun
  • Words

• I'm one of those people if you ask, 'What's your favourite song?' I'm going to give you five. I don't have just one favourite.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • People
  • Song
  • You

• Growing up, I was always the small guy.

  

  Wayne Gretzky
  • Up
  • Guy
  • Small

• I am willing to compete on my merits and on my character - not with the color of my skin. We talk about being a color-blind society, but I don't think the political process could actually handle that.

  

  J. C. Watts
  • Character
  • Society
  • Political

• When a great artist gets my attention, I pursue it. If I don't, someone else will, you know what I'm saying?

  

  Larry Gagosian
  • Great
  • Attention
  • Artist

• Ain't no place like New Orleans. It's one of kind.

  

  Aaron Neville
  • Kind
  • Place
  • New

• Starting in the 1970s, American cars started to lose market share to foreign cars. It was clear what was happening - these better-made foreign car companies were encroaching on the U.S., and the U.S. car makers had less than half of their own country's market.

  

  Ira Glass
  • Country
  • American
  • Car

• For the gay establishment, the death of right and wrong began when gaining civil rights ceased to be enough.

  

  Tammy Bruce
  • Death
  • Gay
  • Enough

• Society tells you that when you're old you have to retire. You have to defy that.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Society
  • Old
  • Retire

• It's not what you wear it's how you wear it, is what I say.

  

  Rachel Stevens
  • You
  • Say
  • Wear

• If every woman who's had an abortion took tomorrow off in protest, America would grind to a halt. And that would be symbolic: because women grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility.

  

  Caitlin Moran
  • Women
  • America
  • Control

• I'm waiting for them to come up with a 'Star Trek' thing so they can beam me from my house to the gigs and back.

  

  Aaron Neville
  • House
  • Me
  • Star

• And as I reinvent myself and I'm constantly curious about everything, I can't wait to see what's around the corner in newfound art and entertainment and exploration.

  

  Pam Grier
  • Art
  • Myself
  • Curious

• What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

  

  Dan Quayle
  • Mind
  • True
  • Lost

• The IRS targeting certain groups for harassment because of their politics would be unfair. If we found out the NSA was keeping special tabs on everyone who worshiped at a mosque or took a Bible trip through the Middle East, you'd have an uprising.

  

  Gail Collins
  • Politics
  • Bible
  • Special

• I never desperately wanted to be a jazz drummer. If anything, I was motivated a lot by fear. Fear of the conductor, fear of the future.

  

  Damien Chazelle
  • Future
  • Fear
  • Motivated

• I guess probably in my time in politics, it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community, despite being subscription television's most valuable customers, they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.

  

  J. C. Watts
  • Time
  • American
  • Community

• In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.

  

  Barry Humphries
  • World
  • She
  • City

• When I left the Beatles, I made an album called McCartney that I played everything on. And it was kind of a cool experience. I felt like a professor in a laboratory, just crafting stuff and adding this, and putting this on and moving the microphone, and it was very homemade.

  

  Paul McCartney Paul McCartney and Wings
  • Experience
  • Kind
  • Moving

• It's very counterintuitive to boil down something so personal, something that requires privacy. All of a sudden, you open it up to the world and put it in a context where you could easily trivialize what you've done. If people sense that discomfort, they're not wrong.

  

  Kristen Stewart
  • People
  • Up
  • World

• I've always been drawn to the idea that small choices in our lives could have drastic effects on our future.

  

  Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Future
  • Small
  • Choices

• I think a lot of people do big movies not because they are talented artists but because they can function in the circumstances.

  

  Ang Lee
  • People
  • Thinking
  • Movie

• Just go into the room, sit in the centre of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.

  

  Ajahn Chah
  • Kind
  • Understanding
  • Meditation