The gift of love. The gift of peace
The gift of happiness. May all these
be yours at Christmas

The earth has grown old with its burden of
care,But at Christmas it always is young

When Christmas bells are swinging above
the fields of snow, we hear sweet voices
ringing from lands of long ago, and etched
on vacant places are half-forgotten faces of
friends we used to cherish, and loves we used
to know

I once bought my kids a set of
batteries for Christmas with a
note on it saying, toys not included

Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions
a special day spent in the warm circle of
family and friends.

May the Blessings of Christmas bring
you Peace and Joy throughout the New Year

A Blessed Christmas to you
the power of love enduring

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes
for a Happy New Year

Joy resounds in the hearts of those
Who believe in the miracle of Christmas!
Wishing you all the peace, joy, and love
Of the season! Season’s Greetings!
I am dreaming of white Christmas ,
With every christmas card i write,
May your days be merry and bright,
And May all your christmases be white.
Marry Christmas.
Lets welcome the year which is fresh
Lets welcome the year which is fresh and new,
Lets cherish each moment it beholds,
Lets celebrate this blissful New year.
Merry X-mas
A lovely thing about Christmas
Is that it’s compulsory,
Like a thunderstorm,
And we all go through it together.
May all the sweet magic of Christmas conspire
To gladden your hearts and fill every desire.
Christmas is not a time nor a season,
But a state of mind.
To cherish peace and goodwill,
To be plenteous in mercy,
Is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
May this Christmas end the present year
On a cheerful note and make way
For a fresh and bright new year.
Here’s wishing you a
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
From home to home and heart to heart,
From one place to another,
The warmth and joy of Christmas,
Brings us closer to each other.
Love came down at Christmas;
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.
May the joy and peace of Christmas be with you all through the Year.
Wishing you a season of blessings from heaven above.
Happy Christmas.

“You can’t kill an idea with a bullet, you can only kill an idea with a better idea.
“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope.
Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.
In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth.
In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until the dawn”

“One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”

“I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.”

“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around”

“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting”

“It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”

“The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly, and with the eyes open.”

“Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.”

“A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.”

“Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it’s exactly like love in three ways: it’s pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.”

“You know the difference between news and gossip, don’t you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.”

“You know the difference between news and gossip, don’t you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.”

You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself.

“If you make your heart into a weapon, you end up using it on yourself.”

“when you judge the power that is in a person, you must judge their capacities as both friend and as enemy.”

“at first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”

““There’s too much love in the world. Sometimes I think that’s what heaven is—- a place where everybody’s happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.””

“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.”

“A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.”
“I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum security prison.”

When a book starts like that, you can’t help being intrigued. Shantaram of David Gregory Roberts piqued my interest the moment I held it between my hands and kept me engrossed till I turned the last page. This is one book that I never wanted to end.. To me, Shantaram serves as a deeply enriching and engaging testament to the indestructible nature of human spirit.

It describes the experiences of an Australian prisoner, who makes his lucky escape to India, and has his share of queer experiences like living in Slums, in Arthur Road Prison, Afghanisthan. Shantaram brings out the humane side of the Lin who couldn’t help but fall in love with innocence of people and led his life in abandon savoring each and every tide of life in his own stride. As his life entwined with engaging characters like Prabhakar, Karla, Didler, Abdullah, Khaderbhai, Qasim Ali, his journey delectably brings out the perseverance of human character against all odds, and his pathological optimism in humanity.

“That’s how we keep this crazy place together – with the heart…. India is the heart. It’s the heart that keeps us together. There’s no place with people, like my people, Lin. There’s no heart like the INDIAN HEART.”

Lin’s insight into the culture of India is quite perceptive and close to home. It made me reflect on Indian Values and how much essence we place on instinct, trust and the judgment of heart.

Here I don’t want to start a discussion on what part of that book is fiction and what part is autobiography, because even our life is a mixture of the experiences that we have and our perceptions of how they can be. This is one book that makes you cheerful and reflective at the same time. This racy, scintillating and engaging story is worth reading even if it’s a figment of fiction as those touching insights can’t be written if they are not felt in heart. How I wished Karla is real! Throughout the book, I was captivated by her meaningful and poignant observations on life.

Savor some of her quotes here…

“Loves are like that. You heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and independence. After a while, you started throwing people out – your friends and everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of girls. That’s why I’m sick of Love.”

“The world and I are not on the speaking terms. The world tries to win me back, but it doesn’t work. I guess I’m just not the forgiving type.”

“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way round.”

“You said it’s important to have freedom to say no, but I think it’s more important to have freedom to say yes.”

“Sometimes I think that’s what heaven is- a place where everybody’s happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.”

“People always hurt us with their trust. The surest way to hurt someone you like, is to put all your trust in him.”

“I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.”

“Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wish they’d never happened.”

“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.”

“I could never respect a man who didn’t have the good sense to be at least a little afraid of me.”

“Sometimes you have to surrender before you win.”

“Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it.”

I’d only give you advice if I didn’t care what happens to you.”

“If fate doesn’t make you laugh, then you just don’t get the joke.”

“I take everything personally- that’s what being a person is all about.”

“It isn’t a secret, unless keeping it hurts.”

“Depression only happens to people who don’t know how to be sad.”

“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting”

Shantaram emerges as a shimmering tribute to the indomitable human character entangled in all its glories, and fallacies. Though his life takes him through nefarious lanes, he comes out decent, vital, enduring and oddly human!

There are so many insightful excerpts that I wish to share, yet I could collect only some of them. Do Enjoy!

Some Of My Favorite Quotes from Shantaram By David Gregory Roberts…

“Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.”

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until the dawn”

“Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.”

“A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.”

“Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.”

“You are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return.”

“Be true to love where ever you find it, and be true to yourself and everything that you really are.”

Water is the driver of Nature.
– Leonardo da Vinci

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.
– Jacques Cousteau

A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.
– Laura Gilpin – From The Rio Grande, 1949

If you gave me several million years, there would be nothing that did not grow in beauty
if it were surrounded by water.
– Jan Erik Vold, What All The World Knows, 1970

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever
mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a
gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939

Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it sucks out its
innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.
– Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944), The Madwomen of Chaillot, 1946

When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746

High quality water is more than the dream of the conservationists, more than a political
slogan; high quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time,
is essential to health, recreation, and economic growth. Of all our planet’s
activities–geological movements, the reproduction and decay of biota, and even the
disruptive propensities of certain species (elephants and humans come to mind) — no force
is greater than the hydrologic cycle.
– Richard Bangs and Christian Kallen, Rivergods, 1985

Between earth and earth’s atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never
a drop more, never a drop less.
This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself.
– Linda Hogan, “Northern Lights,” Autumn 1990

Filthy water cannot be washed.
– West African Proverb

If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one
fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving human health by improving
environmental quality.
– William C. Clark, speech, Racine, Wisconsin, April 1988

In every glass of water we drink, some of the water has already passed through fishes,
trees, bacteria, worms in the soil, and many other organisms, including people. . .
Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption.
– Elliot A. Norse, in R.J. Hoage, ed., Animal Extinctions, 1985

Estuaries are a happy land, rich in the continent itself, stirred by the forces of nature
like the soup of a French chef; the home of myriad forms of life from bacteria and
protozoans to grasses and mammals; the nursery, resting place, and refuge of
countless things.
– Stanely A. Cain, speech, 1966

Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there.
– Isaac Aasimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988

The oceans are the planet’s last great living wilderness, man’s only remaining frontier on
earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species.
– John L. Cullney, “Wilderness Conservation,” September-October 1990

The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and
stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed
by man.
– Charles William Beebe (1877-1962), Log of the Sun, 1906

Wetlands have a poor public image. . . Yet they are among the earth’s greatest natural
assets. . . mankind’s waterlogged wealth.
– Edward Maltby, Waterlogged Wealth, 1986

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and
cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever
is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
– Lao-Tzu (600 B.C.)

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
– Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798

Let’s start with the legend that is Homer Simpson, who has managed over the years during which The Simpsons has been running to give a voice to that odd pull that beer can have over even the most unsuspecting of individuals: “The other day I was so desperate for a beer, I snuck into the football stadium and ate the dirt under the bleachers”.

Two particularly true adages concerning the world of beer have been uttered by Ernest Hemingway, with the great man himself stating “An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools” and “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut”.

Moving on to the legendary banter of Winston Churchill and Bessie Braddock, we have the following exchange that has since gone down in the alcohol-related history books: “Sir, you are drunk!”…”Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober”.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin hit the nail on the head when he stated: “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

The last word on the matter should be left to a man who has a greater mastery over words than the Average Joe, Terry Pratchett: “There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them”.

If you’re a massive fan of beer too, check out Fosters’ new bob mortimer videos!

I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.

I believe in the forgotten runways of Wake Island, pointing towards the Pacifics of our imaginations.

I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel; in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.

I believe in the beauty of all women, in the treachery of their imaginations, so close to my heart; in the junction of their disenchanted bodies with the enchanted chromium rails of supermarket counters; in their warm tolerance of my perversions.

I believe in the death of tomorrow, in the exhaustion of time, in our search for a new time within the smiles of auto-route waitresses and the tired eyes of air-traffic controllers at out-of-season airports.

I believe in the genital organs of great men and women, in the body postures of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Di, in the sweet odors emanating from their lips as they regard the cameras of the entire world.

I believe in madness, in the truth of the inexplicable, in the common sense of stones, in the lunacy of flowers, in the disease stored up for the human race by the Apollo astronauts.

I believe in nothing.

I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dali, Titian, Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, Redon, Duerer, Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, the Watts Towers, Boecklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.

I believe in the impossibility of existence, in the humour of mountains, in the absurdity of electromagnetism, in the farce of geometry, in the cruelty of arithmetic, in the murderous intent of logic.

I believe in adolescent women, in their corruption by their own leg stances, in the purity of their disheveled bodies, in the traces of their pudenda left in the bathrooms of shabby motels.

I believe in flight, in the beauty of the wing, and in the beauty of everything that has ever flown, in the stone thrown by a small child that carries with it the wisdom of statesmen and midwives.

I believe in the gentleness of the surgeon’s knife, in the limitless geometry of the cinema screen, in the hidden universe within supermarkets, in the loneliness of the sun, in the garrulousness of planets, in the repetitiveness or ourselves, in the inexistence of the universe and the boredom of the atom.

I believe in the light cast by video-recorders in department store windows, in the messianic insights of the radiator grilles of showroom automobiles, in the elegance of the oil stains on the engine nacelles of 747s parked on airport tarmacs.

I believe in the non-existence of the past, in the death of the future, and the infinite possibilities of the present.

I believe in the derangement of the senses: in Rimbaud, William Burroughs, Huysmans, Genet, Celine, Swift, Defoe, Carroll, Coleridge, Kafka.

I believe in the designers of the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Berlin Fuehrerbunker, the Wake Island runways.

I believe in the body odors of Princess Di.

I believe in the next five minutes.
J. G. Ballard. I believe

I believe in the history of my feet.

I believe in migraines, the boredom of afternoons, the fear of calendars, the treachery of clocks.

I believe in anxiety, psychosis and despair.

I believe in the perversions, in the infatuations with trees, princesses, prime ministers, derelict filling stations (more beautiful than the Taj Mahal), clouds and birds.

I believe in the death of the emotions and the triumph of the imagination.

I believe in Tokyo, Benidorm, La Grande Motte, Wake Island, Eniwetok, Dealey Plaza.

I believe in alcoholism, venereal disease, fever and exhaustion.

I believe in pain.

I believe in despair.

I believe in all children.

I believe in maps, diagrams, codes, chess-games, puzzles, airline timetables, airport indicator signs.

I believe all excuses.

I believe all reasons.

I believe all hallucinations.

I believe all anger.

I believe all mythologies, memories, lies, fantasies, evasions.

I believe in the mystery and melancholy of a hand, in the kindness of trees, in the wisdom of light.

J.G.Ballard, 1984

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”

“When you’ve fallen on the highway
and you’re lying in the rain,
and they ask you how you’re doing
of course you’ll say you can’t complain –
If you’re squeezed for information,
that’s when you’ve got to play it dumb:
You just say you’re out there waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.”
(Waiting for the Miracle)

“And I’ll dance with you in Vienna,
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.”
(Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs)

“Here’s to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don’t even care”

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
(The Favorite Game)

“As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder. “
(The Favorite Game)

“Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .”

“… i didn’t fall in love of course
it’s never up to you
but she was walking back and forth
and i was passing through”
(Book of Longing)

“I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.”

“first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again”

“Don’t call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.”

“You go your way
I’ll go your way too”

“This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing.”
Chapter 4, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.”
- Chapter 7, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Courage is grace under pressure.

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit’s foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won’t even whore. They’re all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they’re all camp followers.

Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports … all others are games.

“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.”

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may house their bodies, but not souls.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.
Oren Arnold

Somehow, not only for Christmas,
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others,
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing,
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart’s possessing,
Returns to you glad.
John Greenleaf Whittier

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.
W. T. Ellis

The merry family gatherings -
The old, the very young;
The strangely lovely way they
Harmonize in carols sung.
For Christmas is tradition time -
Traditions that recall
The precious memories down the years,
The sameness of them all.
Helen Lowrie Marshall

Love came down at Christ
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.
Christina Rossetti

I heard the bells on Christmas Day.
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat.
Of peace on earth goodwill to men.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Forget about the crackers,
And forget about the candy;
I’m sure a box of chocolates
Would never come in handy;
I don’t like oranges,
I don’t want nuts,
And I HAVE got a pocket-knife
That almost cuts.
But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball!
A. A. Milne
King John’s Christmas.

Heap on the wood! – the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
Sir Walter Scott

And is it true? and is it true?
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
John Betjeman

And in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
At Christmastime.
Bob Geldof and Midge Ure
Do They Know It’s Christmas?

And So This Is Christmas;
And What Have We Done?
Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun;
And So Happy Christmas;
I Hope You Have Fun;
The Near And The Dear Ones;
The Old And The Young.
John Lennon
Happy Christmas (War is Over).

At Christmas play, and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.
Thomas Tusser

Yoga is possible for anybody who really wants it. Yoga is universal…. But don’t approach yoga with a business mind looking for worldly gain. ~Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois

The beauty is that people often come here for the stretch, and leave with a lot more. ~Liza Ciano, co-owner and co-director of Yoga Vermont, yogavermont.com

Yoga, an ancient but perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one’s being, from bodily health to self-realization. Yoga means union – the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one’s actions. ~B.K.S. Iyengar, Astadala Yogamala

Tree pose grows confidence. ~Terri Guillemets

Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God. ~Krishnamacharya

For those wounded by civilization, yoga is the most healing salve. ~Terri Guillemets

Chair pose is a defiance of spirit, showing how high you can reach even when you’re forced down. ~Terri Guillemets

Basketball is an endurance sport, and you have to learn to control your breath; that’s the essence of yoga, too. So, I consciously began using yoga techniques in my practice and playing. I think yoga helped reduce the number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it’s unequaled. ~Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Before you’ve practiced, the theory is useless. After you’ve practiced, the theory is obvious. ~David Williams, an Ashtanga yoga teacher in Maui, Hawaii, quoted from yoga.com