Fake Buddha Quotes

The following has appeared a number of times on the internet, and a few times in printed books, attributed to the Buddha:

Those whom summer’s heat tortures yearn for the full moon of autumn
Without even fearing the idea
That a hundred days of their life will then have passed forever.

It doesn’t seem to have made it into any of the quotation sites yet.

It originates in Mathieu Ricard’s book, “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.”

Ricard is a very famous monk who is well-known for his levels of happiness, which have been measured, using various …

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A kind reader of this blog alerted me to this one yesterday: “The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts. Rule your mind or it will rule you.”

This is a composite fake quote. The final sentence, “Rule your mind or it will rule you,” is one I’ve dealt with elsewhere. It’s a paraphrase of a quote by the Roman lyric poet, Horace (65–27 BCE).

The first two sentences were correctly identified by my correspondent as being from the work of the Indian-born English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray. …

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In the Sutta Central discussion forum, Ayya Sudhamma (who goes by the handle “@Charlotteannun” there), posted an interesting analysis of a supposed translation of the Therigatha. The title literally means “Poems of the elder nuns,” and it’s an ancient Buddhist compilation of poems or songs composed by enlightened female disciples of the Buddha. It, and its counterpart the Theragatha (“Poems of the elder monks”), are among my favorite texts, since they directly and vividly present the voices of practitioners two and a half millennia ago, giving insight into their outer and inner lives.

I’ll quote, with Ayya Suddhamma’s permission, …

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I recently found this quote, “Rule your mind or it will rule you,” in a note I’d made to myself over five years ago. (How time flies!) It was posted by a woman I used to follow on the now-defunct (and for me, much-lamented) social media site Google+.

The quote isn’t at all in the style of the Buddhist scriptures, which made me suspicious. Actually I was more than suspicious; I was certain it wasn’t from the Buddha. The style is far too polished and literary, while the Buddhist scriptures tend to be rather clunky.

It only took a few …

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I found this quote in an article on Medium.com  with the title “6 Quotes By Buddha That Will Change How You See The World And Yourself.” The piece was written by Sinem Günel.

Amazingly, not one of the six quotes is by the Buddha, suggesting once again that some people have a positive attraction toward bogus quotes — a kind of “bullshit detector” in reverse.

Here are the six quotes Günel offers us as the supposed teachings of the Buddha.

1. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
2. “

I found this quote in an article on Medium.com, written by Sinem Günel and titled “6 Quotes By Buddha That Will Change How You See The World And Yourself.”

Needless to say, not one of the quotes is by the Buddha, suggesting once again that some people have a positive attraction toward bogus quotes — a kind of “bullshit detector” in reverse.

Here’s what Günel offers us as the supposed teachings of the Buddha.

1. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
2. “Don’t respond to rudeness. When people are