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Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

Alan Watts

Few people did more to popularize Eastern philosophy in the West than the British writer, speaker, and philosopher Alan Watts. From the late 1930s through to the 1970s, Watts wrote more than 20 books and published numerous articles that helped interpret and popularize Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophiesy among a wider Western audience. He became particularly popular in the 1960s, especially among members of the emerging hippie counter culture. In 1957, Watts published his book “The Way of Zen,” from which this quote comes. “It is hard to see how the world can be improved by keeping still,” he wrote. “Yet it should be obvious that action without wisdom, without clear awareness of the world as it really is, can never improve anything.” As Watts points out, sometimes the best way to deal with a go-go-go world is simply to take a break and think deeply rather than acting rashly.

If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy’s landmark novel “Anna Karenina” opens with the line, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This phrase sets the scene for the sprawling story, which navigates marriage, faith, society, and, of course, familial dynamics. Excerpted here is a quip spoken by Princess Natalya Lvov as she debates parenting styles with her husband, Prince Arseny Lvov. While her husband prefers to be dutiful and involved to a fault in raising his two sons, Natalya believes children should be left somewhat alone to become who they will be. Natalya’s insistence that the search for faultlessness is a breeding ground for discontentment is a mindset we can transfer to all aspects of life, not just child-rearing. Perfection is impossible to achieve, let alone maintain, and the sooner we acknowledge that fact, the happier we allow ourselves to be.

The seeds of great things are often small.

From our first babblings to our last word, we make but one statement, and that is our life.

Richard Paul Evans

Richard Paul Evans is a prolific writer, having published dozens of books, including nonfiction works on money management and his bestselling fictional “Christmas Box” series. These words come from the series’ last installment, “The Letter,” in which a father grieves for his young daughter and finds a letter from his own estranged mother. Evans’ story focuses on the choices we make, and all the feelings, both good and bad, that ripple after them. His words here remind us that the experiences of our lives, from the difficult to the joyful, define us as much as we define them. In the end, our actions and the way we treated others will be our legacy.

Admire as much as you can, most people don't admire enough.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” is widely considered one of the best and most famous paintings in history. But according to letters sent to his brother Theo, Van Gogh was staying in an asylum for depression at the time he began that masterpiece, and he wasn’t permitted to paint in his room. After admiring the sky from his bedroom window in the morning, he relied on the deep impression the sky had left in his memory once he had access to his paints. This story lends a poignant depth to his advice to admire all we can, which itself comes from another letter to Theo. Van Gogh’s appreciation for the beauty around him, even in the most challenging of circumstances, led him to produce perhaps his greatest work. What beauty might we glean from our own lives if we were to also cultivate a deep level of admiration for the world around us?

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

In a letter to German poet and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer Bettina von Arnim quoted this line first spoken by her friend Ludwig von Beethoven, whose musical ability had by that point (the early 1800s) taken Europe by storm. In the view of the virtuoso, the unspeakable quality of music to uncover deep emotion and understanding surpasses that of any works by sages and philosophers. For Beethoven, to hear and be moved by a musical composition is to experience the highest intellectual state.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

Carl Sagan

American astronomer Carl Sagan was known and much beloved for his research on extraterrestrial life and the cosmos, which he shared with the public in his earnest, enthusiastic manner on his 1980 TV show “Cosmos,” the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. In his book "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," Sagan noted that even the simplest scientific concept, fully grasped, can elicit a spiritual experience. “The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a modest scale, with the magnificence of the cosmos,” he wrote. “When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.”