Openness Quotes - Page 2

Nixon under pressure turned only to reporters from publications already favorable to him; Kennedy, in trouble, turned to those most critical and dubious of him, and if anything tended to take those already for him a bit for granted.

I envy these people. Wide-open suffering, their messes all hanging out. Lives boiled down to raw need--a near-holiness to it. And all of us driving our cars up and down the mountain--we'll go on forever trying to fool each other.

As his former student Alastair Fowler once remarked, "Lewis seemed always on the verge of hilarity -- between a chuckle and a roar.

An encounter with other cultures can lead to openness only if you can suspend the assumption of superiority, not seeing new worlds to conquer, but new worlds to respect.

Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham

The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life’s changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others. This is our choice. Although often perceived as a weakness, being open and surrendering to the experience of the present moment is our greatest strength. By authentically living Life in the Now, we submit to Divine guidance where we find the freedom to see everything equally and sacred in Truth.

When John Quincy Adams in the Netherlands was placed with elementary students and belittled because he did not speak Dutch, either the author or John Adams accuses school authorities of "littleness of soul".

The Word of God bares weight on all ages always.

...Society needs to open its collective mind to all ideas and ideologies. It needs to give its people the chance to listen to the opinions of others, and then examine them critically instead of rejecting them prematurely. Such a creative dialogue based on positive critical thinking can enhance and develop ideas.

He loved his family, his friends, his writing, his painting; he knew their flaws, but they neither surprised nor embittered him.

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

The more broken you are, the more light gets through.

In Martin Luther's life and behavior is very courteous and friendly, and there is nothing of the stern stoic or grumpy fellow about him. He can adjust to all occasions. In social gathering he is gay, witty, ever full of joy, always has a bright and happy face, no matter how seriously his adversaries threatening him. One can see that God's strength is within him. – Petrus Mosellanus

The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him.

There are so many ways to think about almost everything. And none of them is nearly as round as reality.

I had never been much interested in Pluto, too many facts and too much isolation.

He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.

Make us, Lord, in Chesterton's distinction, travelers instead of tourists. Where the tourist defines his day by the expectation of seeing certain things, give us the traveler's openness to seeing what You will reveal.

You can talk all you want about freedom of speech, but it's freedom of hearing that counts.

Possibly, there was something to be said for the intellectual discipline of second-guessing what you thought was true.

PARAPHRASE: Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration.

Self-help courses will only help you if they teach you to pay attention to life itself.

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.

Augustine in City of God pictures a resurrection in which the bodily systems we no longer need to protect ourselves can use energy to praise God.

A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm.

Then I wondered why on earth would anyone ever stand in the world as if standing in the cornucopic middle of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but inside a tiny white-painted rectangle about the size of a single space in a car park, refusing to come out of it, and all around her or him the whole world, beautiful, various, waiting?

Be honest. This applies to every area of your life. Sketchiness is not an attractive trait. No more trying to cover up your baggage, sweeping things under the rug, withholding truth, blatant lying, or even telling seemingly ‘harmless’ white lies or half-truths – release the need to lie completely! Start NOW.

Reading what you want, and having one book lead to the next, is the way I found my discipline.

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

When her daughter was frightened of a thunderstorm, the author pointed out the verse which declares the Heavens reveal the glory of God. When another storm occurred, her daughter ran to the window. "Mommy, God's really showing off today!

Lincoln was less well-read than many a professor or journalist, but what he read, he read deeply.

The road itself tells us far more than signs do.

The arts are the best Time Machine we have." C. S. Lewis

A man is as old as his arteries and as young as his ideas.

only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.

Life produces a different taste each time you take it.

As the honors accrued, creativity diminished.

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.

History teacher Bob Alston's "expertise late not in his sweeping knowledge of the topic but in his ability to pick after a tumble, to get a fix on what he does not know, and to generate a roadmap to guide his new learning. He was an expert at cultivating puzzlement it was Alston's ability to stand back from first impressions, to question his quick leaps of mind, to keep track of his questions that together pointed him in the direction of new learning.

The Bible and newspapers, to both Lincoln and Greeley, they represented equally compelling gospel.

Theres nothing more efficient than honesty and nothing more powerful than vulnerability because, vulnerability reveals everyone in your life who will abuse power immediately and almost irrevocably. Theres nothing weaker than hiding your vulnerability because, it means a refusal to stare at those who abuse power and see them for who they are which means they still have power and control over you. Nothing is stronger than vulnerability. Nothing more clarifying. Nothing is clearer than vulnerability, and if you hide who you are you are just making a tombstone of your everyday actions because you dont exist in hiding and you're letting the past rob you. Exercise the power of vulnerability. When you are vulnerable you are signaling to your system that the past is over and done! That you're no longer a victim! That you're no longer trapped in a destructive and abusive environment! vulnerability means it's over, it's done. The war is over but, if you continue to use the same defenses that you had in the past all you're telling your whole body is that the past is not over. Be vulnerable. Be honest. Be open and show your heart. That's the best way of telling your heart that the tigers are no longer in the grass. I'm telling you, just take it for a spin. Vulnerability and openness will get you what you want in your life and hiding will only get you the feeling of being prey from here until the end of your life.

You can recognize a saint by the wounds they don't disguise.

I was only 44, which is childhood philosophy.

We still thought that we were the only two people in the world who were interested in the right kind of things in the right kind of way. C.S. Lewis

Happiness lies even in ltiny ittle butterflies. You just have to open up your eyes and see where beauty flies to beautify your world lenghtwise.

I found myself with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause.

Lippmann was very good at staying young, at not aging and becoming a prisoner of his past experiences.

Wear your heart on your sleeve. Write about what you think and feel. And share it with your friends.

The adoptee benefits because his collective parents are permitted to grow secure in their particular roles in his life. His adoptive parents are not unwittingly encouraged to compete to possess him. Nor are his birth parents punished and banished from a place in his life.

We can honestly say that everyone we've known who has used effective communication has been grateful for it in the long run. Often, effective communication brings about huge relief by showing you just how strongly your partner feels about you -- and by strengthening the bond between you two. And even though in some instances the response may not be what you hoped for and you'll be convinced that you've ruined everything -- if only you had said or done something else, he would surely have come around -- we've never heard anyone say in retrospect that they regretted raising an important issue in a dating or relationship setting. In fact, they overwhelmingly express gratitude that effective communication got them that one step closer to their long-term goal of either finding the right person or strengthening their existing bond.

Curiosity – if not desire, if not plain kindness – might have led him to greater zeal.

The universe is full of doors.

The author says resilience is the ability to move rob a preferred state to an expanded list of alternatives.

She had responded to the loss of her husband, to poverty, to disease, and to family cruelty with boldness and ingenuity, by opening herself to others, especially to her children and her Church, pouring into these precious vessels her knowledge, hope, and devotion.

Sometimes, the only way to evolve is to open ourselves fully.

Laughter is the ultimate emotion of openness. When you laugh, you release your fears, abandon your hatred and let down your guard to embrace the flow of the Universe.

The pitching coach was bugged by the author's technique because he had never seen anyone do it before, and besides, it wasn't the coach's idea.

He seemed to believe that indignation was a sufficient guardian.