Uncategorized Quotes - Page 71

This doesn't mean that we stop helping people set goals or that we stop expecting people to grow and change. It means that we stop respecting and evaluating people based on what we think they should accomplish, and start respecting them for who they are and holding them accountable for what they're actually doing. It means that we stop loving people for who they could be and start loving them for who they are. It means that sometimes when we're beating ourselves up, we need to stop and say to that harassing voice inside, "Man, I'm doing the very best I can right now.

Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets.

Shower the darkness with loveand watch light illuminate.

We might laugh at the notion of plastic tea sets in the jungle, but it is a time-honored ritual for Western travelers to collect preindustrial artifacts to use as home decorations...Possession of primitive artifacts suggests worldly knowledge, just as in the highland communities of Borneo an electronic wristwatch that plays "Happy Birthday" is the mark of a great traveler. Funny thing how travel can narrow the mind.

Muslim children should be raised with the understanding that once they hit puberty they are adults and Mukallaf (responsible for their actions). This understanding is crucial to assist them in passing the tests of youth.

If there is no desire for prayer, maybe there is no hunger for God.

It was a gift. What did I do with it? Life didn't accumulate as I'd once imagined. I graduated from boarding school, two years of college. Persisted through the blank decade in Los Angeles. I buried first my mother, then my father. His hair gone wispy as a child's. I paid bills and bought groceries and got my eyes checked while the days crumbled away like debris from a cliff face. Life a continuous backing away from the edge.

In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels; and perhaps she had peeped into one of my strange windows out of curiosity and had caught a glimpse of my doomed loneliness, or her fancy had been intrigued by the mute language, the clue of my painting.And then, while I advanced always along my corridor, she lived her normal life outside, the exciting life of those people who live outside, that strange, absurd life in which there are dances and parties and gaiety and frivolity. And it happened at times that when I walked by one of my windows she was waiting for me, silent and longing (why was she waiting for me? why silent and longing?); but other times she did not get there on time, or she forgot about this poor creature hemmed in, and then I, with my face pressed against the glass wall, could see her in the distance, smiling or dancing carefree, or, what was worse, I could not see her at all and I imagined her in inaccessible or vile places. And then I felt my destiny a far lonelier one than I had imagined.

I find a source of love in everything that breathes, moves, touches, whispers, smiles. I wake up everyday to search and find love in the wild dream of loneliness.

So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to 'get somewhere' it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.

we know little of the things for which we pray

When you lose your path, you get an opportunity to discover a world you have never known! And better worlds are often found this way! Darkness and uncertainty hide presents in itself!

Life is holy endured faith.

It is not really wise to make too many assumptions when you don’t yet have all the facts to do so. You may believe your conclusions are logical, while they may turn out to be totally wrong.

The one who can make full sense of love and lives within its narrow expections undresses no weeping face.

Repent heart rekindles the spirit.

Too many of us live with an uncontrolled thought life. It is possible to learn to identify destructive thoughts and make wiser choices. Instead of letting those thoughts rumble freely about in my mind, I make the choice to harness them and direct them toward truth.

While I do not believe in imperative goals or ends, I do believe in a returning endgame. When you reach one end, it should be for conception. When you reach the next end, it should be for immortality. One should reach the state of existing and non-existing at the same time. One's goals and endgame should be metaphysical and pataphysical, stepping over the edge of logic and reason. If you are not reaching to step above... then you belong at the bottom.

Loneliness—since I was trying to escape it—was hell; and yet for the hermit who seeks it, it is apparently happiness.

If you’ve gone to travel to have fun, you will most likely have no new choices to make. But if you have gone travelling to grow, then you are bound to have to make that choice—that of making a new home and welcoming people in it regardless of how different they are from you.

The goal, then, is to uncouple fear and failure—to create an environment in which making mistakes doesn’t strike terror into your employees’ hearts.

You be wise to stop yo’ negative ways, mister.

It was Chase who had obtained the information from the girl’s boyfriend during a party in an Irish pub, simply by using his British friendliness and charm.

All that glisters is not gold;Often have you heard that told.Many a man his life hath soldBut my outside to behold - Gilded tombs do worms infold;Had you been as wise as bold,Young in limbs, in judgement old,Your answer had not been inscrolled - Fare you well; your suit is cold.

And whatever troubled him and showed in his face might have been the same old trouble - the problem of occupying space in the world and having a name people could call you by, being somebody they thought they could know.

Illumination is remembering your identity as the eternal spirit and energy that animates all that is.

The path of light is quest for knowledge.

Luck is merely a product of the happily delusional mind.

Misery and poverty of a nation is associated with the conscious of its people not leaders.

We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind.

Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see.

Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops seemed to be coming up nicely.

Choice, what people really want, is the most important thing. Choosing the life you want, making your own choices-that is what defines you as human.

We ought to seek daily grace.

There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.

Oh, will you pray? Stop now and pray, lest desire turn to feeling and feeling evaporate.

Every day, whatever you do, you trade a day of your life for it.

To those who have been accustomed to the difficulties and dangers of a sea-faring life, there are no lines which speak more forcibly to the imagination, or prove the beauty and power of the Greek poet, than those in the noble prayer of Ajax:"Lord of earth and air,O king! O father! hear my humble prayer.Dispel this cloud, that light of heaven restore;Give me to see - and Ajax asks no more,If Greece must perish - we Thy will obey;But let us perish in the face of day!

We all look back at some time or other and wonder why we didn't listen to our instincts. Why did we hestiate? Why did we lose our dreams?

Life is beautiful. Suffering is due to unconscious following.

We must be happy with what we got when we are in pursuit of what we want.

Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.

My discourse leads to the truth; the mind is great and guided by this teaching is able to arrive at some understanding. When the mind has understood all things and found them to be in harmony with what has been expounded by the teachings, it is faithful and comes to rest in that beautiful faith.

If you enjoy sticking a straw in a dog's ear, don't sit next to the pooch with a milkshake.

Do you know why Satan is so angry all the time? Because whenever he works a particularly clever bit of mischief God uses it to serve his own Rigteous purposes.""So God uses wicked people as his tools?""God gives us the freedom to to do great evil, if we choose, then He uses his own freedom to create goodness out of that evil, for that is what He chooses.""So, in the long run, God always wins?""Yes, in the short run though it can be uncomfortable.

My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound.My mind, I hope, will soon be found.

...words are so strong and I am so timid - my soul ignores warnings and I end up covered with your paint ...

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

Self-transformation commences with a period of self-questioning. Questions lead to more questions, bewilderment leads to new discoveries, and growing personal awareness leads to transformation in how a person lives. Purposeful modification of the self only commences with revising our mind’s internal functions. Revamped internal functions eventually alter how we view our external environment.

One may sleep as long as one prefers, but one should know that each hour of excess sleep is an hour lost for learning.

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

THERE WAS ALWAYS a boy in your life that common sense and the prayers of parents told you to stay away from: fast talker, fast car, and fast hands. He was the boy your father kept a loaded shotgun by the door for and met on the front porch if he ever thought about venturing onto his property…let alone the threshold. He was the tall, dark, mysteriously handsome, and uncharacter-istically quiet one that made you wonder what was going on in his head, and that little voice in your head said it wasn’t always so honorable. He was the boy you broke all of the rules over because bad-boys equaled excitement and the rebel in you liked the ride.

In the sweet territory of silence we touch the mystery. It's the place of reflection and contemplation, and it's the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.

Every television program must be a complete package in itself. No previous knowledge is to be required. There must not be even a hint that learning is hierarchical, that it is an edifice constructed on a foundation. The learner must be allowed to enter at any point without prejudice. This is why you shall never hear or see a television program begin with the caution that if the viewer has not seen the previous programs, this one will be meaningless. Television is a nongraded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away with the idea of sequence and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.

The desires you aspire to need strong chains of intent.

Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.

The first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.

The best beauty treatment of all is time spent quietly before the Lord.