Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.
Interpretation
Words have power and can influence change when used thoughtfully.
This quote emphasizes the profound impact that language can have on the world. It suggests that when we choose our words carefully and communicate effectively, we have the ability to inspire, motivate, and bring about positive change in ourselves and others.
In practice
During a motivational speech, I can use this quote to highlight the importance of language in inspiring others.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Some people as a result of adversity are sadder, wiser, kinder, more human. Most of us are better, though, when things go better.
The masters say if you create an auspicious condition in your body and your environment then meditation and realization will automatically arise.
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
I think you have to listen to the people who are deeply unhappy. You have to find the source of it and not overreact to the craziness in it.
What's encouraging about meditation is that, even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.
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