185 Quotes by Mark Nepo

The gift of patience opens when our body, heart, and mind slow enough to move in unison.

The wildflower’s reward for trusting what it senses but doesn’t yet know is to become what is was born to be – a flower whose inevitable place is realized in a small moment of Oneness, as it joins with elements that were here before it came alive and which will live on once it dies.

Is it possible that, with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being.

Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.

Likewise, every disturbance, whether resolved or not, is making space for an inner engagement. As a shovel digs up and displaces earth, in a way that must seem violent to the earth, an interior space is revealed for the digging. In just this way, when experience opens us, it often feels violent and the urge, quite naturally, is to refill that opening, to make it the way it was. But every experience excavates a depth, which reveals its wisdom once opened to air.

So, if you can, give up the want of another and be who you are, and more often than not, love will come at the precise moment you are simply loving yourself.

Whatever is held and listened to will show us where it lives in the world and in us.

When feeling badly about ourselves, we often try on other skins rather than understand and care for our own.

Since speed and confidence are the traits of success we are taught to strive with, it takes added courage to welcome time and humility into our lives.