Stephen Richards Author Quotes - Page 3

As human beings, we are custom made to be happy. Why then would we want to change the order of things by not being happy?

One way you can trace your way back to real and true happiness and joy is through forgiveness.

Reality is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about. Your entire life and everything in it is a result of your belief system coupled with your thoughts. The feelings and emotions you have cement this in your mind, and the illusion of all of this combined is what you see as your reality on a moment-to-moment and day-to-day basis.

It is how hard you want, what you want that gets it.

By understanding the basic impediments to forgiveness, the repercussions of failing to forgive and the fruits of forgiveness, this will lead you gently to the shoreline of a distinct new and more powerful YOU.

Locking ourselves in the situation where we wish for sympathy and want to be looked at as the aggrieved party normally makes us powerless.

Do the forgiveness and carry on going forward. Leave the worrying to the other person. Eat what is on your plate and leave the rest to them.

In an unforgiving world, chaos rules.

You are the custodian of your own happiness. What other people say, do or think does not create a basis for your happiness. It is you who decides your own happiness, just like forgiveness.

In the process of forgiveness, you can only control your own actions and decisions.

At one point the worst thing to happen was the odd stabbing or slashing, the violence that we live with nowadays used to only be seen in Hollywood gangster movies such as Gangs of New York, Menace to Society and Boys and the Hood. Even when we were reading about the crack hitting London, no one in Scotland would have thought in their wildest dreams that it would have taken off in our cities, towns and now even highland villages.

When you forgive, you are freed from some of the feelings of disapproval and it can contribute to lessening your negative thoughts.

This pain you are avoiding is a very necessary pain that will make you strong again.

They think giving people longer prison sentences is going to teach people a lesson. Well that is just fantasy, as we just take our drugs and violence in to the prison. Our brothers and sisters, pals or rivals outside plug the gap that has been left by the dealer that was selling the crack or smack in the first place. Just like kamikazes, when one is dead, fifty queue up to take their place.

Your life depends entirely on your reactions to the accountability that you are faced with.

If you have no friends, invent one!

All the resentment that lies in your heart is simply causing damage to you mostly.

I was reading that there are children at the age of twelve and thirteen selling their bodies at dinnertimes for as little as £5 when they should be at school. Now if that is not a problem, I don’t know what is. The drug problem has got way too far out of hand.

If it doesn't take your breath away, make a bigger wish.

Forgiveness does not change the past, that’s for sure, but it does change the future.

When Barlinnie’s Prison doctor, Dr Danson, came to see Dingus, he turned in disgust at the state Dingus was left to lie in. Doctor Danson refused to treat him as he knew Dingus’s injuries were life threatening, he told the top warden that Dingus would need to be rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary for emergency surgery. The screws in the seg block refused to listen to the doctor, they pushed and manhandled their own doctor out of Dingus’s cell and threatened him with a severe beating if he made anything public about Dingus’s injuries.

Just because you have been through a bad experience does not give you the ticket to keep going back to that situation over and over again and dramatizing it out of proportion.

True gratitude, not mere verbal platitudes of thanks, is also a power in and of itself, which bursts forth from our inner being to the universe. Having received this power, the universe must respond, allowing more gifts to come our way.

Pain can cause us to learn no end of lessons, but without resolution there can be no healing!

Now if you want to look to the medical profession for a true hard bastard, there is none harder, in my opinion, than the man I will now name. I mean, 99.9 per cent of doctors would want to protect their pension and keep in with the in-crowd, not, though, this man amongst men. The star witness against the screws from Barlinnie was Doctor Simon Danson.

To be a power to reckon with you need to believe in yourself and your dreams.

The rush I got from crime was better than that of glue, drink or hash. I loved playing cat and mouse with the local coppers. He Who Dares Wins, the SAS motto, was very applicable to my life then.

Take a walk through the garden of forgiveness and pick a flower of forgiveness for everything you have ever done.

Bongo and Shug seen what was going on and decided to smash holes all over the roof of the hall, just for something to do. Bongo was first on to the roof, where, unknown to him he was being filmed from a cell in the hall straight across from him, but Bongo didn’t give a fuck as he never even wore a mask to try and protect his face, he was in his element, so was Shug. And to their credit, they didn’t half wreck the roof of the hall.

If you go through the biography of any famous personality you idolize you are sure to see the how the words ‘I can’ and ‘I believe’ played a very vital role in their fame.

On the morning of Wednesday 13 March 1996, Thomas West Hamilton shattered the peaceful country town of Dunblane, Stirlingshire, with a fusillade of gunfire that reverberated round the world.

Forgiveness is not simply a single act, it is a full process.

The riot screws did not stop there, they dragged him down the corridor where ten other nameless screws repeatedly coshed him over the head and face and body. Dingus by now was totally out cold, he had received the equivalent injuries of someone who was involved in a car crash.

There’s just no comparison between these hard men, some fight with their bare hands, some with their brains and some with weapons. Some have a sixth sense for survival, avoiding death with catlike ease. I don’t include any world champ at this or that, but I do include men that would wipe the floor with any world champion at anything you wanted to throw at them.

Thirteen years have past since 1993, and I still have not seen one single book, documentary or anything to the biggest epidemic in Scottish, British prison history. I would go as far and say, no other prison in the world had fourteen men catching the HIV virus at the same time.

Forgiveness does carry with it numerous obstacles and one may well be surprised why many people find it a very difficult hurdle to jump over.

The heart is where the journey of forgiveness begins.

If it is about education, then all who are college graduates should be wealthy.

Only through a steady mind and constant faith can your desires manifest.

The moment we become forgivers, then we are in line to enjoy the benefits of forgiveness.

Another man of sheer violence was the late Stewart Boyd, he was killed in a car accident over in Spain’s Costa del Sol shortly after being released from prison in June 2003. But he certainly left his mark on the city streets of Glasgow. He was a force to be reckoned with, a gang enforcer. Murder and witness intimidation were high on his criminal charge sheet.

Things, events and people align and position themselves accordingly when a strong enough thought stirs them.

There is no getting away from the fact, he is one of only a few screws in the system who are the real McCoy. Anyone reading this book who has spent time in Scottish prisons will no doubt agree, this chimp is up for it just as much as the prisoners. I personally would love to see more screws like him, as he doesn’t bother with all this shitty report piss. If you want to fight him, he comes into your cell, one-on-one, man-to-man.

The world is full of victims; don’t add to the growing culture of “I’ve a story to tell”, well not unless it’s a story to help others overcome situations or as a warning.

When you love someone's everything with your everything then you truly are in love.

The minute we put aside our self-righteousness and move away from being the aggrieved, then we are on a healing process.

When you use positive words it naturally has a very dynamic effect on the energy present around you.

Failing to forgive yourself for certain wrongs you committed in the past can create self-dislike.

Your forgiveness or failure to forgive simply takes you nearer or further away from your ultimate goal. There are no two ways to deal with it, there is only one.