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Here's How The People Live Here, In Big House-shaped Boxes To Keep Off 'rain' And 'snow,' Holes Cut In The Sides So They Can See Out. They Move Around In Smaller Boxes, Painted Different Colours, With Wheels On The Corners. They Need This Box-culture Because Each Person Thinks Of Herself And Himself As Locked In A Box Called A 'body,' Arms And Legs, Fingers To Move Pencils And Tools, Languages Because They've Forgotten How To Communicate, Eyes Because They've Forgotten How To See. Odd Little Planet. Wish You Were Here. Home Soon.

-Richard Bach

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Here's How The People

Richard Bach

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Here's How The People Live Here, In Big House-shaped Boxes To Keep Off 'rain' And 'snow,' Holes Cut In The Sides So They Can See Out. They Move Around In Smaller Boxes, Painted Different Colours, With Wheels On The Corners. They Need This Box-culture Because Each Person Thinks Of Herself And Himself As Locked In A Box Called A 'body,' Arms And Legs, Fingers To Move Pencils And Tools, Languages Because They've Forgotten How To Communicate, Eyes Because They've Forgotten How To See. Odd Little Planet. Wish You Were Here. Home Soon.

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How Easy It Is To Be Compassionate When It's Yourself You See In Trouble.

Don't Fear Change. It's Always For The Best.

We Are Each Given A Block Of Marble When We Begin A Lifetime, And The Tools To Shape It Into Sculpture... We Can Drag It Behind Us Untouched, We Can Pound It Into Gravel, We Can Shape It Into Glory.

If You Love Someone, Set Them Free. If They Come Back They're Yours; If They Don't They Never Were.

As You Believe, So It Is For You.

If You Don't Want To Be A Teacher, You'd Better Get Off This Planet.

Life Does Not Require Us To Be Consistent, Cruel, Patient, Helpful, Angry, Rational, Thoughtless, Loving, Rash, Open-minded, Neurotic, Careful, Rigid, Tolerant, Wasteful, Rich, Downtrodden, Gentle, Sick, Considerate, Funny, Stupid, Healthy, Greedy, Beautiful, Lazy, Responsive, Foolish, Sharing, Pressured, Intimate, Hedonistic, Industrious, Manipulative, Insightful, Capricious, Wise, Selfish, Kind Or Sacrificed. Life Does, However, Require Us To Live With The Consequences Of Our Choices.

Having Made The Decision To Love, Had I Chosen Life Instead Of Death?

Our Soulmate Is Someone Who Shares Our Deepest Longings, Our Sense Of Direction. When We're Two Balloons, And Together Our Direction Is Up, Chances Are We've Found The Right Person. Our Soulmate Is The One Who Makes Life Come To Life.

I Do Everything Myself, From Engine Start To Engine Shutdown. In A War, I Will Face Alone The Missiles And The Flak And The Small-arms Fire Over The Front Lines. If I Die, I Will Die Alone.

Strong Beliefs Win Strong Men, And Then Make Them Stronger.

You Are Life, Inventing Form. No More Can You Die On Sword Or Years Than You Can Die On Doorways Through Which You Walk, One Room Into Another. Every Room Gives Its Word For You To Speak, Every Passage Its Song For You To Sing.

There Is Such A Thing As Perfection...and Our Purpose For Living Is To Find That Perfection And Show It Forth....each Of Us Is In Truth An Unlimited Idea Of Freedom. Everything That Limits Us We Have To Put Aside.

A Soulmate Is Someone Who Has Locks That Fit Our Keys, And Keys To Fit Our Locks.

You Have The Freedom To Be Yourself, Your True Self, Here And Now, And Nothing Can Stand In Your Way".

I'm Not A Celebrity Or Near Celebrity. Sometimes People Will Say, "you're Famous" And That Stops Me Right There. What Does Fame Mean? Fame Is In The Eye Of The Beholder. So, If Somebody Wants To Call Me 'famous', That's Their Business. I'm Just Me, A Guy Who Messes Around With Airplanes And Writes Books That Make Sense To Him.

Nobody Comes To Earth To Dodge Problems. We Come Here To Take 'em On.

It's Like A Pulsar Inside Me. There Is This Great Burst Of Energy, Forcing Me To Write, And Then The Star Goes Quiet For A Time, And I Think It's Gone, But It's Gathering Energy For Another Burst. And I Seem To Be Almost Unwilling Participants In This.

Everybody Is Given A Dream... You May Have To Work For It However.

Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth.

He Who Argues For His Limitations Gets To Keep Them

Amazing. You Were So Attached To It, And It Still Disappeared For You." “attached! I Was Whocking That Cloud With Everything I Had! Fireballs, Laser Beams, Vacuum Cleaner A Block High...” “negative Attachments, Richard. If You Really Want To Remove A Cloud From Your Life, You Do Not Make A Big Production Out Of It, You Just Relax And Remove It From Your Thinking. That’s All There Is To It.

There Is A Kind Of Silver Spiderweb That's Spun Around The World, And The Strands Of That Web Are Certain Loves And Certain Understandings. And If We Follow Those, And If We Walk Those Strands, We're Going To Meet Others At The Intersections Who Have Been Walking The Same Way Across This Web. And When We Meet, There's A Kind Of "i Know Who You Are."

The Man Who Flies An Airplane ... Must Believe In The Unseen.

Think About These Once In Awhile, And Watch Your Answers Change.

Flyers Have A Sense Of Adventures Yet To Come, Instead Of Dimly Recalling Adventures Of Long Ago As The Only Moments In Which They Truly Lived.

The Opposite Of Loneliness Is Not Togetherness , It's Intimacy.

Nothing Happens By Chance, My Friend... No Such Thing As Luck.

We're All The Sons Of God, Or Children Of The Is, Or Ideas Of The Mind, Or However Else You Want To Say It.

Everything In This Book May Be Wrong. - The Savior's Manual

Every Person, All The Events Of Your Life Are There Because You Have Drawn Them There. What You Choose To Do With Them Is Up To You.

I Belong To A Group Of Men Who Fly Alone. There Is Only One Seat In The Cockpit Of A Fighter Airplane. There Is No Space Alotted For Another Pilot To Tune The Radios In The Weather Or Make The Calls To Air Traffic Control Centers Or To Help With The Emergency Procedures Or To Call Off The Airspeed Down Final Approach. There Is No One Else To Break The Solitude Of A Long Cross-country Flight. There Is No One Else To Make Decisions.

You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn.

An Easy Life Doesn't Teach Us Anything. In The End It's The Learning That Matters: What We've Learned And How We've Grown

The Only Thing That Matters, At The End Of A Stay On Earth, Is How Well Did We Love, What Was The Quality Of Our Love?

Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Rebuilding Us. Isn't That What The Spirit Requires, When We Climb Over The Wreckage Of Our Lives, Sometimes, We Go On To Make Our Lives Our Own Affirmation? We Are Perfect Expressions Of Perfect Love, Here And Now. There Is No Permanent Injury.

I Relax My Body Completely, Relax My Mind Completely, And Then Imagine Myself At A Level Where Anything Can Happen.

Your Conscience Is The Measure Of The Honesty Of Your Selfishness. Listen To It Carefully.

Were We, Also, Hiking Along Some Cosmic Journal Page? Were The Events About Us All Part Of A Message We Could Understand, If Only We Found The Right Perspective From Which To Read Them? Somehow, With Our Long Series Of Miracles, I Thought So.

Nobody Means To Get Carried Away In Mediocrity, But It Happens, It Happens Unless You Think About Everything You Do, Unless You Make Every Choice The Best One You Know How To Make.

Everything You've Said, Everything You Want To Believe Is Already True. You May Not Find Some Of It For A While, And Some Of It Might Take Longer Than That, But That Doesn't Stop It From Being True This Minute!

Jonathan Is That Brilliant Little Fire That Burns Within Us All, That Lives Only For Those Moments When We Reach Perfection.

There Are Two Tests That We [writers] Have For All Of Our Writing: So What? And Who Cares? There Is An Answer To Both. The Answer To Who Cares Is That A Reader Cares, If The Writing Is Good. The Answer To So What Is That These Ideas Give Us Completely New Understanding, Change Our Sense Of Who We [people] Are And Why We're Here [on This Planet].

Of Course There’s Destiny, But Destiny Doesn’t Push You Where You Don’t Want To Go. You’re The Ones Who Choose. Destiny Is Up To You.

It Took Time To Learn That The Hard Thing About Writing Is To Let The Story Write Itself, While One Sits At The Typewriter And Does As Little Thinking As Possible. It Happened Over And Over Again, And The Beginner Learned - When You Start Puzzling Over An Idea, And Slowing Down On The Keys, The Writing Gets Worse And Worse.

Every Problem Has A Gift For You In Its Hands.

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift For You In Its Hands. You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

You're Master Of What You've Lived, Artisan At What You're Living, Amateur At What's Next To Live.

Isn't It Strange How Much We Know If Only We Ask Ourselves Instead Of Somebody Else.

Character Comes From Following Our Highest Sense Of Right, From Trusting Ideas Without Being Sure They’ll Work.

That’s What Learning Is, After All; Not Whether We Lose The Game, But How We Lose And How We’ve Changed Because Of It, And What We Take Away From It That We Never Had Before, To Apply To Other Games. Losing, In A Curious Way Is Winning.

So Much Of What We Said Sounded Crazy, Yet None Of It Was False... As If Two Theoretical Physicists Stood On Stage To Say That When We Travel Near Lightspeed, We Get Younger Than Nontravellers; That A Mile Of Space Next To The Sun Is Differnt Than A Mile Of Space Next To The Earth Because The Sun-mile Space Is Curved More Than The The Earth-mile. Silly Ideas, Worth The Admission Price In Smiles, But They're True. Is High-energy Physics Interesting Because It's True Or Because It's Crazy?

One Challenge Of Our Adventure On Earth Is To Rise Above Dead Systems...wars, Nations, Destructions...to Refuse To Be A Part Of Them, And Express The Highest Selves We Know How To Be.

Sometimes When Learning Comes Before Experience It Doesn't Make Sense Right Away.

It's Like, At The End, There's This Surprise Quiz: Am I Proud Of Me? I Gave My Life To Become The Person I Am Right Now. Was It Worth What I Paid?

Eating Disorder

Anything We Need To Know, We Can Learn It From A Book. Reading, Careful Study, A Little Practice, And We’re Throwing Knives Expertly, Overhauling Engines, Speaking Esperanto Like Natives.

And Like No Other Sculpture In The History Of Art, The Dead Engine And Dead Airframe Come To Life At The Touch Of A Human Hand, And Join Their Life With The Pilot's Own.

Laughing On The Way To Your Execution Is Not Generally Understood By Less-advanced Life Forms, And They Call You Crazy.

Remember Where You Came

I Think Our Learning Lies Along The Path Of Whatever It Is We Love.

I Don't Want To Do Business With Those Who Don't Make A Profit, Because They Can't Give The Best Service.

Service Culture

I'm Not Approachable By Someone Who Says, "let's Try Some Drugs," Or Something Like That. I'm Absolutely Close-minded About That Kind Of Thing. But I'm Wide Open To Anyone Who Says, "i've Been Wondering Why We're Here And Where We're Going, And I've Got A Few Answers, But I Wondered If Anything Ever Happened To You That Suggests..." Then They Have Me, And I Become A Chatterbox And Can Just Talk Away Literally For Days.

If We Must Lose Wife Or Husband When We Live To Our Highest Right, We Lose An Unhappy Marriage As Well, And We Gain Ourselves. But If A Marriage Is Born Between Two Already Self-discovered, What A Lovely Adventure Begins, Hurricanes And All.

Reality Lies Far Beyond Space And Time, And I Need To Know Why.

This Kind Of Thinking, He Found, Is Not The Way To Make One's Self Popular With Other Birds. Even His Parents Were Dismayed As Jonathan Spent Whole Days Alone, Making Hundreds Of Low-level Glides, Experimenting.

We Look At Some People As If They Were Special, Gifted, Divine. Nobody Is Special And Gifted And Divine. No More Than You Are, No More Than I Am. The Only Difference, The Very Only One, Is That They Have Begun To Understand What They Really Are And Have Begun To Practice It.

From Time To Time It's Fun To Close Our Eyes, And In That Dark Say To Ourselves, 'i Am The Sorcerer, And When I Open My Eyes I Shall See A World That I Have Created, And For Which I And Only I Am Completely Responsible.' Slowly Then, Eyelids Open Like Curtains Lifting Stage-center. And Sure Enough, There's Our World, Just The Way We've Built It.

He Spoke Of Very Simple Things- That It Is Right For A Gull To Fly, That Freedom Is The Very Nature Of His Being, That Whatever Stands Against That Freedom Must Be Set Aside, Be It Ritual Or Superstition Or Limitation In Any Form. "set Aside," Came A Voice From The Multitude, "even If It Be The Law Of The Flock?" "the Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom," Jonathan Said. "there Is No Other.

How Can A Deer Tell When A Leaf Falls Silent In The Forest? She Hears It Breathing Differently.

If Our Body Is A Perfect Expression Of Our Thought About Body, And If Our Thought About Body Is That It’s Condition Has Everything To Do With Inner Image And Nothing To Do With Time, Then We Don’t Have To Be Impatient For Being Too Young Or Frightened Of Being Too Old.

There Is Something To Astrology For Those Who Believe In Astrology, As There Is Something To Medicine For Those Who Believe In Medicine. Every System Works When We Give Our Heart To It.

Humanity Is Not A Gift Of Nature, It Is A Spiritual Achievement To Be Earned.

Don't Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You. All They Show Is Limitation. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

Nothing Happens By Chance, My Friend... No Such Thing As Luck. A Meaning Behind Every Little Thing, And Such A Meaning Behind This. Part For You, Part For Me, May Not See It All Real Clear Right Now, But We Will, Before Long.

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

Happiness Is The Reward We Get For Living To The Highest Right We Know.

You Can Achieve A Goal; You Never Really Achieve Your Purpose, Because Your Purpose Is Ongoing. It Never Stops.

The Creative, Loving-something Life Is Also The Healthy One. There Is Healing And Protection In Doing What Makes You Happy.

Do You Ever Have The Feeling You're A Tourist On Earth?

Fear Is All The Fear Of Some Loss: "i'm Going To Lose Something." If We Declare, And If We Know In Our Hearts, "i Already Have Everything That I Need: I Have Life, I Have Creativity, I Have Joy, I Have Nourishment. I Have Everything I Need," And If We Just Say, "it Doesn't Depend On My Having A Physical Body To Do It," Then Everything Opens Up.

The Gull Sees Farthest Who Flies Highest

Some Choices We Live Not Only Once But A Thousand Times Over, Remembering Them For The Rest Of Our Lives.

Everything Is Exactly As It Is For A Reason. The Crumb On Your Table Is No Mystical Reminder Of This Morning's Cookie, It Is There Because You Have Chosen Not To Remove It. No Exceptions.

One Of The Cosmic Laws, I Think, Is That Whatever We Hold In Our Thought Will Come True In Our Experience.

Law Of Attraction

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them. You're Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

I Take The Paraglider To The Mountain Or I Roll Daisy Out Of Her Hangar And I Pick The Prettiest Part Of The Sky And I Melt Into The Wing And Then Into The Air, Till I'm Just Soul On A Sunbeam.

Not Being Known Doesn't Stop The Truth From Being True. You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World, The Master Calls A Butterfly. Learning Is Finding Out What We Already Know. Doing Is Demonstrating That You Know It. Teaching Is Reminding Others That They Know Just As Well As You. You Are All Learners, Doers And Teachers. The Best Way To Pay For A Lovely Moment Is To Enjoy It.

It’s Not When You Start That Makes Your Success In The World, But When You Quit.

Like Most Writers, We Like To Find What We Know And Pass It Along To Anyone Who Cares. When That's Done, As Soon As We've Said The Best We Can Say, There's Nothing Else About Us That's Remotely Interesting To Anybody Else, And We Go Back Behind The Walls. We Can Be Intimate In Books, We Can Be Intimate In Talks, But Then We Need Time To Be Alone.

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Choices.

What If Somebody Came Along Who Could Teach Me How My World Works And How To Control It What If I Could Meet A Super-advanced ... What If A Siddhartha Or A Jesus Came Into Our Time, With Power Over The Illusions Of The World Because He Knew The Reality Behind Them And What If I Could Meet Him In Person, If He Were Flying A Biplane, For Instance, And Landed In The Same Meadow With Me.

You Don't Want A Million Answers As Much As You Want A Few Forever Questions. The Questions Are Diamonds You Hold In The Light. Study A Lifetime And You See Different Colors From The Same Jewel.

Why Fly? Simple. I'm Not Happy Unless There's Some Room Between Me And The Ground.

Shop For Security Over Happiness And We Buy It At That Price.

Languages Are Fluffy Big Pillows Stuffed Between Nations - What Others Say Is Muffled And Nearly Lost In Them, And When We Speak Their Grammar We Get Feathers In Our Mouth. It's Worth It. What Pleasure To Phrase An Idea, Even In Child's Words, Slowly, And Sail It Across The Gulf In Another Language To A Different-speaking Human Being!

How Can We Resent The Life We've Created For Ourselves? Who's To Blame, Who's To Credit, But Us? Who Can Change It, Any Time We Wish, But Us?

We Are Each Given A Block Of Marble When We Begin A Lifetime, And The Tools To Shape It Into Sculpture. We Can Drag It Behind Us Untouched, We Can Pound It To Gravel, We Can Shape It Into Glory. Examples From Every Other Life Are Left For Us To See, Lifeworks Finished And Unfinished, Guiding And Warning. Near The End Our Sculpture Is Nearly Finished, And We Can Smooth And Polish What We Started Years Before. We Can Make Our Progress Then, But To Do It We Must See Past The Appearances Of Age.

Never Stop Being A Kid, Richard. Never Stop Feeling And Seeing And Being Excited With Great Things Like Air And Engines And Sounds Of Sunlight Within You. Wear Your Little Mask If You Must To Protect You From The World But If You Let That Kid Disappear You Are Grown Up And You Are Dead.

Fail At Love, And The Other Tests Don't Matter.

The Bond That Links Your True Family Is Not One Of Blood, But Of Respect And Joy In Each Other's Life.

Allow The World To Live As It Chooses, And Allow Yourself To Live As You Choose.

Don't You Think Between Here And Now We Will See Each Other Once Or Twice?

We Think, Sometimes, There’s Not A Dragon Left. Not One Brave Knight, Not A Single Princess Gliding Through Secret Forests... What A Pleasure To Be Wrong. Princesses, Knights, Enchantments And Dragons, Mystery And Adventure... Not Only Are They Here-and-now, They’re All That Ever Lived On Earth!

Your Harshest Truths Are Dreams, And Your Gentlest Dreams Are True.

You Are Not The Child Of The People You Call Mother And Father, But Their Fellow-adventurer On A Bright Journey To Understand The Things That Are.

I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy.

Two Words: Love Leads. Listen To That Ring Of Love Within. If We Follow That Leading Of Love We'll Be Guaranteed An Adventurous, Positive, Joyful Life.

The Conversation Between Fletcher And Jonathan Livingston Seagull Is Centered On Why Some Have Achieved More Than Others . . . Are They Divine . . . Ahead Of Their Times . . . Fletcher Says, Well, This Kind Of Flying Has Always Been Here To Be Learned By Anybody Who Wanted To Discover It; That's Got Nothing To Do With Time. We're Ahead Of The Fashion, Maybe. Ahead Of The Way Most Gulls Fly. Poor Fletch. Don't You Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You? All They Show Is Limitations. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

If Our Friendship Depends On Things Like Space And Time, Then When We Finally Overcome Space And Time, We've Destroyed Our Own Brotherhood! But Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now. And In The Middle Of Here And Now, Don't You Think That We Might See Each Other Once Or Twice?

Can Miles Truly Separate You From Friends... If You Want To Be With Someone You Love, Aren't You Already There?

At Last, The Answer Why. The Lesson That Had Been So Hard To Find, So Difficult To Learn, Came Quick And Clear And Simple. The Reason For Problems Is To Overcome Them. Why, That’s The Very Nature Of Man, I Thought, To Press Past Limits, To Prove His Freedom. It Isn’t The Challenge That Faces Us, That Determines Who We Are And What We Are Becoming, But The Way We Meet The Challenge, Whether We Toss A Match At The Wreck Or Work Our Way Through It, Step By Step, To Freedom.

The More I Want To Get Something Done, The Less I Call It Work.

I Gave My Life To Become The Person I Am Right Now. Was It Worth It?

The Way To Tell If Your Job Is Done: If You're Alive, You've Got A Job.

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

Boredom Between Two People Doesn't Come From Being Together Physically. It Comes From Being Apart Mentally And Spiritually.

An Airplane Stands For Freedom, For Joy, For The Power To Understand, And To Demonstrate That Understanding.

Every Word That Judges Value Is Circular. 'good' Is 'right' Is 'proper' Is 'just' Is 'good'. But Check The Examples, And They're Not Circular At All: Every One Says 'makes Me Happy'.

Anything We Need To Know, We Can Learn It From A Book.

One Of The Delights Of The New Age Is That It's A Turning Of Consciousness To Give Us Permission To Look Beyond Appearances. But There Are Traps That Come With It. It's Brave To Throw Off The Old Altars And Churches And Ceremonies That Kept Us From Discovery, It's Not So Brave To Replace Them With Chants And Rituals And New Priests Who Are Retreads Of The Old.

Hate Is Love Without Enough Data.

Through Default Or Intention, Unaware Or By Design, We Not Only Choose But Create The Visible Outer Conditions That Are Most Resonant To Our Inner State Of Being.

For A Moment, Off Balance, Was I Annoyed? Anger Is Always Fear, I Thought, And Fear Is Always Fear Of Loss. Would I Lose Myself If He Made Those Choices? It Took A Second To Settle Down: I'd Lose Nothing. They'd Be His Wishes, Not Mine, And He's Free To Live As He Wants. The Loss Would Come If I Dared Force Him, Tried To Live For Him And Me As Well. There'd Be Disaster Worse Than Life On A Bar Stool.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves. We Live In Denial Of What We Do, Even What We Think. We Do This Because We're Afraid.we Fear We Will Not Find Love,and When We Find It We Fear We'll Lose It. We Fear That If We Don't Have Love We Will Be Unhappy.

Evolution Made Civilization Steward Of This Planet. A Hundred Thousand Years Later, The Steward Stood Before Evolution Not Helper But Destroyer, Not Healer But Parasite. So Evolution Withdrew Its Gift, Passed Civilization By, Rescued The Planet From Intelligence And Handed It To Love.

Dying Is Like Diving Into A Deep Lake On A Hot Day. There's The Shock Of That Sharp, Cold Change, The Pain Of It For A Second, And Then Accepting Is A Swim In Reality. But After So Many Times, Even The Shock Wears Off.

There Were Times In My Life When I Said, "oh God, I'm Making A Terrible, Terrible Mistake Here." And On Another Level It Looked As If That's Exactly What I Had Done. All Of Us Can Look Back Across Our Lives And See What We Thought Was A Disaster Was Actually A Blessing - From A Long-term Perspective, It Was A Blessing. With Practice, We Can Shorten The Length Of Time Between "what A Dumb Mistake I've Made" And "what A Brilliant Choice That Was.

Every Problem In Your Life Carries A Gift Inside It.

Whatever Enchants Also Guides And Protects.

What A Story That Would Make! How Many Men And Women Go Through The Same Rivers, Menaced By The Same Sharp Clichés, The Same Jagged Dangers That Have Threatened Us! If The Idea Stands Up, I Thought, It Would Be Worth Uncovering The Typewriter! How Richard-years-ago Would Have Wanted To Know: What Happens When We Set Off Searching For A Soulmate Who Doesn't Exist, And Find Her?

Reputation Is What People Think You Are. Character Is Who You Really Are. Take Care Of Your Character And Your Reputation Will Take Care Of Itself. The More I Want To Get Something Done, The Less I Call It Work.

The Only Enlightened Masters I Know Are The People That I See Every Day And The People That I've Seen Through My Life Who Have Had The Understanding, At Some Level, That We're Here To Express Love.

As Long As We Believe In Sequential Time, We See Becoming Instead Of Being. Beyond Time, We Are All One.

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know. Doing Is Demonstrating That You Know It. Teaching Is Reminding Others That They Know Just As Well As You. You Are All Learners, Doers, Teachers.

Jonathan Seagull Discovered That Boredom And Fear And Anger Are The Reasons That A Gull's Life Is So Short, And With Those Gone From His Thought, He Lived A Long Fine Life Indeed.

My Airplane Is Quiet, And For A Moment Still An Alien, Still A Stranger To The Ground, I Am Home.

Do You Have Any Idea How Many Lives We Must Have Gone Through Before We Even Got The First Idea That There Is More To Life Than Eating, Or Fighting, Or Power In The Flock? A Thousand Lives, Jon, Ten Thousand!

It Doesn't Matter Whether They [beloved Ones] Are On This Planet Or Not On This Planet Anymore. Once Something Is Bound By Love, As Long As That Love Exists, There Is Nothing That Can Separate Us. There Is The Appearance Of Separation, But The Heart, It Always Treasures And Values That.

You Wait A Lifetime To Meet Someone Who Understands You, Accepts You As You Are. At The End, You Find That Someone, All Along, Has Been You.

You Are Led, When You Share Your Loves, To An Enchanted Life Of Inner Happiness, Which Unsharing Others Cannot Know.

Inner Happiness

We Choose Our Next World Through What We Learn In This One. Learn Nothing, And The Next World Is The Same As This One, All The Same Limitations And Lead Weights To Overcome.

The Big Thing About Writing Is Three Commands: Have Fun. Don't Think. Don't Care.

The Best Way To Avoid Responsibility Is To Say, 'i've Got Responsibilities.

If Your Happiness Depends On What Somebody Else Does, I Guess You Do Have A Problem.

Compelling Reason Will Never Convince Blinding Emotion.

Compelling Reason

If You Will Practice Being Fictional For A While, You Will Understand That Fictional Characters Are Sometimes More Real Than People With Bodies And Heartbeats.

There's This Wonderful And Very Important Event When We're Born, And We Forget Everything That's Gone Before, Or Else We'd Be Such A Mass Of Rememberings That We Couldn't Operate Successfully On This Planet.

Forget Everything

Important Events

Each Of Us Is Free To Move Our Consciousness Through That Infinite Pattern Of Possibilities As We Please. If We're Filled With Fears, Or If We Trust The Fears Of Others, We'll Choose A Path In Which Our City Falls Into The Sea, Or A Path In Which A Third World War Vaporizes Us, Or Whatever Other Disaster Is Most Thrilling Or Horrifying Or Fascinating For Us.

That She Won The Game Startled Me Cold. The Way She Won, The Pattern Of Her Thought On The Chessboard, Charmed Me Warm Again And Then Some.

It Doesn’t Take Time To Change Once You Understand The Problem...somebody Hands You A Rattlesnake, It Doesn’t Take Long To Drop It, Does It?

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

Why, Jon, Why?" His Mother Asked. "why Is It So Hard To Be Like The Rest Of The Flock, Jon? Why Can't You Leave Low Flying To The Pelicans, The Alhatross? Why Don't You Eat? Son, You're Bone And Feathers!" "i Don't Mind Being Bone And Feathers Mom. I Just Want To Know What I Can Do In The Air And What I Can't, That's All. I Just Want To Know.

Why Had Such A Promising World Been Crucified On The Tree Of Obligation, Thorned By Duties, Hanged By Hypocrisy, Smothered By Customs?

Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

In The Path Of Our Happiness Shall We Find The Learning For Which We Have Chosen This Lifetime.

A Professional Writer Is An Amateur Who Didn't Quit.

Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is A Mystery, Today Is A Gift, That's Why We Call It The Present. If I Am Not For Myself, Who Will Be For Me? And If I Am Only For Myself, What Am I? And If Not Now, When? A Brick Alone Is Nothing But A Brick. It Takes A Collection Of Bricks To Build A House. Instructor, What?? You Mean You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn

Sometimes When You Say Goodbye, That's The Right Thing To Do In A Relationship.

We're Different, We're The Same. You Thought You'd Never Find A Word To Say To A Woman Who Didn't Fly Airplanes. I Couldn't Imagine Myself Spending Time With A Man Who Didn't Love Music. Could It Be It's Not As Important To Be Alike As It Is To Be Curious? Because We're Different, We Can Have The Fun Of Exchanging Worlds, Giving Our Loves And Excitements To Each Other. You Can Learn Music, I Can Learn Flying. And That's Only The Beginning. I Think It Would Go On For Us As Long As We Live.

Within Each Of Us Lies The Power Of Our Consent To Health And Sickness, To Riches And Poverty, To Freedom And To Slavery. It Is We Who Control These, And Not Another.

If We Want To End This Lifetime Higher Than We Began, We Can Expect An Uphill Road.

To Bring Anything Into Your Life, Imagine That It's Already There.

A Name Is A Label, And As Soon As There Is A Label, The Ideas Disappear And Out Comes Label-worship And Label-bashing, And Instead Of Living By A Theme Of Ideas, People Begin Dying For Labels... And The Last Thing The World Needs Is Another Religion.

In The Highest Sense, We Are All Creatures Of Light. And I Have A Very Difficult Time Talking With People Who Are Cynical About The World. "the World Is No Damn Good, And We're All Animals," And That Kind Of Thing. Well, I'm An Animal.

Care About Understanding And Before You Know It, In Just A Few Decades, You'll Have A System Of Thinking That Gives You Answers Whenever You Ask.

The One Thing We Fear Most Is The One Thing That Is Not Possible: We Cannot Die, We Cannot Be Destroyed.

Thanks To You, I Always Am So Happy. Now I Want To Give You All The Happiness On Your Birthday.

One Way To Pick A Future Is To Believe It’s Inevitable.

Books Arent Written On Whim Or Promises. Books Are Written On Years Turned Inside Out By Ideas That Never Let Go Until You Get Them In Print, And Even Then Writings A Last Resort, A Desperate Ransom You Pay To Get Your Life Back.

Good And Evil Are Not What Our Parents Told Us, Not What Our Church Tells Us, Or Our Country, Not What Anybody Else Tells Us! All Of Us Decide Good And Evil For Ourselves, Automatically, By Choosing What We Want To Do!

When You're Flying, An Airplane Doesn't Care Who You Are; It Doesn't Care How Much Money You Make Or Don't Make. All It Cares About Is: How Well Do You Fly? How Well Do You Know The Airplane? How Well Do You Know The Sky?

Fear Not, Nor Be Dismayed At The Appearance That Is Darkness, At The Disguise That Is Evil, At The Empty Cloak That Is Death, For You Have Picked These For Your Challenges. They Are Stones On Which You Choose To Whet The Keen Edge Of Your Spirit.

What Was The Question? ...oh. Where Do I Get My Crazy Ideas? Answer: Sleep-fairy, Walk-fairy, Shower-fairy. Book-fairy. And In These Last Few Years, From My Wife. Now When I Have Questions I Ask Her And She Tells Me The Answer. If You Haven't Already, I'd Suggest You Want To Find Your Soulmate, As Soon As You Can. Next Question?

We All Know Those Who Draw Their Boundaries Carefully And Say, "i'm Only Human. Nobody's Perfect. I Accept My Limitations." And We Know Others Who Take An Opposite View And Say, "i Can Do Anything I Choose To Do. It Is In My Power To Change The World." And Those Are The Ones Who Most Often Change The World.

Every Gift From A Friend Is A Wish For Your Happiness.

Reality Is Divinely Indifferent.

I'm Utterly Convinced Of The One-ness Of Love And Us As Its Perfect Reflection. I Am Absolutely Convinced That The World Around Us Is A World Of Appearances And Anyone Who Wants To Can Practice It. Change Your Thought And Your Environment Will Change. It's Not Instantaneous And Sometimes We Have To Work Very Hard To Make What We Want Happen. Working Hard And Holding That Thought, It Will Change.

Fly Free And Happy Beyond Birthdays And Across Forever, And We'll Meet Now And Then When We Wish, In The Midst Of The One Celebration That Never Can End.

Judge Not By The Form Of The Messenger, But The Form Of The Message.

We're The Bridge Across Forever, Arching Above The Sea, Adventuring For Our Pleasure, Living Mysteries For The Fun Of It, Choosing Disasters Triumphs Challenges Impossible Odds, Testing Ourselves Over And Again, Learning Love And Love And Love!

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Navigate By The Same Star, Unwilling To Change, And You Find Yourself Not Only Off-course But Lost.

Finding Yourself

Flying Has Always Been To Me This Wonderful Metaphor. In Order To Fly You Have To Trust What You Can't See. Up On The Mountain Ridges Where Very Few People Have Been I Have Thought Back To What Every Flyer Knows. That There Is This Special World In Which We Dwell That's Not Marked By Boundaries, It's Not A Map. We're Not Hedged About With Walls And Desks. So Often In An Office The Very Worst Thing That Can Happen Is You Could Drop Your Pencil. Out There's A Reminder That Are A Lot Worse Things, And A Lot Greater Rewards.

If You Want Magic, Let Go Of Your Armor. Magic Is So Much Stronger Than Steel.

Numbers Are Limits, And Perfection Doesn't Have Limits.

Sooner I'd Try To Change History Than Turn Political, Than Try Convincing Others To Write Letters Or To Vote Or To March Or To Do Something They Didn't Already Feel Like Doing.

Hell Is A Place, A Time, A Consciousness, In Which There Is No Love.

The First Prerequisite Of An Advanced Being Is A Sense Of Humor.

Two Things I Do Value A Lot, Intimacy And The Capacity For Joy, Didn't Seem To Be On Anyone Else S List. I Felt Like The Stranger In A Strange Land, And Decided I'd Better Not Marry The Natives.

Win By Losing. Before Your Outer Walls Break, As Break They Must, Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth. Protect That You Are Infinite Life, Choosing Its Playground; Protect That The World You Know Exists With Your Consent And For Your Own Good Reasons; Protect That Your Purpose And Mission Is To Shine Love In Your Own Playful Way, In The Moments You Decide Will Be Most Dramatic.

Flyers Fell A Certain Kinship With The Sight Of The Earth Unencrusted By Humanity, They Want To See It That Way In One Sweeping View, In Reassurance That Nature Still Exists On Her Own, Without A Chain-link Fence To Hold Her.

You'd Chosen To Be An Upright Biped On The Surface Of A Small Planet Of A Minor Sun On The Edge Of A Minor Galaxy Of One Of The Multiple Trillions Of Universes. That's Ok. It Doesn't Matter What Form You Take.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . Was No Ordinary Bird. Most Gulls Don't Bother To Learn More Than The Simplest Facts Of Flight How To Get From Shore To Food And Back Again. For Most Gulls, It Is Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight. More Than Anything Else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull Loved To Fly.

I Have Always Wanted An Adventurous Life. It Took A Long Time To Realize That I Was The Only One Who Could Make An Adventurous Life Happen To Me.

Adventurous Life

I've Learned That It Is What I Do Not Know That I Fear, And I Strive, Outwardly From Pride, Inwardly From The Knowledge That The Unknown Is What Will Finally Kill Me, To Know All There Is To Be Known About My Airplane. I Will Never Die.

You Will Begin To Touch Heaven, Jonathan, In The Moment That You Touch Perfect Speed. And That Isn’t Flying A Thousand Miles An Hour, Or A Million, Or Flying At The Speed Of Light. Because Any Number Is A Limit, And Perfection Doesn’t Have Limits. Perfect Speed, My Son, Is Being There.

Next To ‘god’, ‘love’ Is The Word Most Mangled In Every Language.

No Matter How Qualified You Are, You Won't Reach A Better Life Until You Imagine It.

Law Of Attraction

It Must Happen To Us All…we Pack Up What We’ve Learned So Far And Leave The Familiar Behind. No Fun, That Shearing Separation, But Somewhere Within, We Must Dimly Know That Saying Goodbye To Safety Brings The Only Security We’ll Ever Know.

Only A Few People Are Interested In What You Have To Say, But That Is All Right. You Don't Have To Tell The Quality Of A Master By The Size Of His Crowds.

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