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The World Is Your Exercise Book, The Pages On Which You Do Your Sums. It Is Not Reality, Though You May Express Reality There If You Wish. You Are Also Free To Write Lies, Or Nonsense, Or To Tear The Pages.

-Richard Bach

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The World Is Your

Richard Bach

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The World Is Your Exercise Book, The Pages On Which You Do Your Sums. It Is Not Reality, Though You May Express Reality There If You Wish. You Are Also Free To Write Lies, Or Nonsense, Or To Tear The Pages.

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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.

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.

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

Look In The Mirror And One Thing Is Sure: What We See Is Not Who We Are.

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.

Like Everything Else, Fletcher. Practice.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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.

You're Never Given A Dream Without The Power To Make It True.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

Have You Ever Felt So At One With The World, With The Universe, With Everything That Is, That You Were Overcome With Love? That Is Reality. That Is The Truth. What We Make Of It Is Up To Us, As The Painting Of The Sunrise Is Up To The Artist. In Our World Humanity Has Strayed From That Love. It Lives Hatred And Power Struggles And Manipulations Of The Earth Itself For Its Own Narrow Reasons. Continue And No One Will See The Sunrise. The Sunrise Will Always Exist, Of Course, But People On Earth Will Know Nothing Of It And Finally Even Stories Of Its Beauty Will Fade From Our Knowing.

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

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

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.

It's Easy To Live The Expected And Conventional. It's When You Live The Unexpected That You Start Having Fun With Your Life.

Choose A Love And Work To Make It True, And Somehow, Something Will Happen, Something You Couldn’t Plan, Will Come Along To Move Like To Like, To Set You Loose, To Set You On The Way To Your Next Brick Wall.

Just Because Somebody Drops In On You From Another Dimension, Don't Assume They're Wiser Than You About Anything At All, Or That They Can Do Anything Better Than You Can Do Yourself. Discarnate Or Mortal, What Matters About People Is What They Know.

Listen,' He Said. 'it's Important. We Are All. Free. To Do. Whatever. We Want. To Do.

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

That’s Why Love Stories Don’t Have Endings! They Don’t Have Endings Because Love Doesn’t End.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

Does Anybody Learn Writing, Or Do They Just Touch Someone Who Lets Them See The Power Of The Deleted Word?

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.

We [americans] Are Game-playing, Fun-loving Creatures; We Are The Otters Of The Universe.

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

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

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

What Matters Is How I Use What I Know, Every Minute Of Every Day; How I Use It To Remember, In The Midst Of The Game.

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.

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.

The Gulls Who Scorn Perfection For The Sake Of Travel Go Nowhere, Slowly. Those Who Put Aside Travel For The Sake Of Perfection Go Anywhere, Instantly.

I Like That You Can Open Up Any One Of My Books Anywhere And Immediately Be Lost. I Just Love Them So Much.

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.

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!

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

Respect For Sovereignity, For Privacy, For Total Independence. Gentle Alliances Against Loneliness, They Were, Cool Rational Love-affairs Without The Love.

Your Whole Body, From Wingtip To Wingtip," Jonathan Would Say, Other Times, "is Nothing More Than Your Thought Itself, In A Form You Can See. Break The Chains Of Your Thought, And You Break The Chains Of Your Body, Too.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

You Teach Best That Which You Need Most To Learn.

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

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

There Is Something That Is Transcendental About When We Are Immersed In That Which We Most Love.

Remember Where You Came From, Where You're Going, And Why You Created This Mess You Got Yourself Into In The First Place.

Life's Battles Don't Always Go To The Strongest Or Fastest; Sooner Or Later Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

Avoid Problems, And You'll Never Be The One Who Overcame Them.

So This World, I Think, And An Indefinite Number Of Other Worlds Of Our Creation, Are Also - We're Here For Fun; We're Here For Learning; We're Here For Remembering Who We Are, And Who We Are, Are Expressions Of Life So Absolutely Linked With The Life That Is, Always Was, Always Will Be.

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

Children Are Not Our Property, And They Are Not Ours To Control Any More That We Were Our Parents' Property Or Theirs To Control.

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.

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

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.

Believe You Know All The Answers, And You Know All The Answers. Believe You're A Master, And You Are.

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.

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?

Do You Have Any Idea How Many Lives We Must Have Gone Through Before We Even Get The First Idea That There Is More To Life Than Eating, Or Fighting, Or Power In The Flock? A Thousand Lives, Jon, Ten Thousand! And Then Another Hundred Lives Until We Began To Learn That There Is Such A Thing As Perfection, And Another Hundred Again To Get The Idea That Our Purpose For Living Is To Find That Perfection And Show It Forth... 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.

Grief Is No More Necessary When We Understand Death Than Fear Is Necessary When We Understand Flying.

I Don't Think Creativity Is Mine To Maintain. It Automatically Comes When We Declare That "i Am An Expression Of Life, And Life Will Express Itself Through Me In The Most Playful And Wonderful Of Ways, If I Let It."

I Do Not Enjoy Writing At All. If I Can Turn My Back On An Idea, Out There In The Dark, If I Can Avoid Opening The Door To It, I Won't Even Reach For A Pencil.

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?

Every Problem In Your Life Carries A Gift Inside It.

You Don't Love Hatred And Evil, Of Course. You Have To Practice And See The Real Gull, The Good In Every One Of Them, And To Help Them See It In Themselves. That's What I Mean By Love.

I Am! You Are! And Love: Is All: That Matters!

In Order To Live Free And Happily You Must Sacrifice Boredom. It Is Not Always An Easy Sacrifice.

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.

The Meaning I Picked, The One That Changed My Life: Overcome Fear, Behold Wonder.

Bad Things Are Not The Worst Things That Can Happen To Us. Nothing Is The Worst Thing That Can Happen To Us!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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.

She Didn't Mean To Be Sexy That Moment, But Even A Winter Nightgown Couldn't Hide That Lovely Outline. When Will I Outgrow My Simple-minded Fascination With The Form She Had Happened To Choose For Her Body? Never, I Thought

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.

The Gull Sees Farthest Who Flies Highest

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.

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.

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

He Moves Not Through Distance, But Through The Ranges Of Satisfaction That Come From Hauling Himself Up Into The Air With Complete And Utter Control; From Knowing Himself And Knowing His Airplane So Well That He Can Come Somewhere Close To Touching, In His Own Special And Solitary Way, That Thing That Is Called Perfection.

How Much To Learn If We Could Spend One Hour, Spend Twenty Minutes, With The Us We Will Become! How Much Could We Say To The Us We Were.

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.

The World's Crazy, When It Comes To Beauty.

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.

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.

My Way Of Writing A Book Is Completely Disorganized - To Hurl Myself At The Problem, Over And Over.

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.

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Choices.

Here Is The Test To Find Whether Your Mission On Earth Is Finished: If You're Alive, It Isn't.

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.

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?

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

Just Be Who You Are, Calm And Clear And Bright. Automatically, As We Shine Who We Are, Asking Ourselves Every Minute Is This What I Really Want To Do, Doing It Only When We Answer Yes, Automatically That Turns Away Those Who Have Nothing To Learn From Who We Are And Attracts Those Who Do, And From Whom We Have To Learn, As Well.

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

The World Is A Dream, You Say, And It’s Lovely, Sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.” “no. The Image Is A Dream. The Beauty Is Real. Can You See The Difference?

If You Want To Meet Someone Who Can Fix Any Situation You Don't Like, Who Can Bring You Happiness In Spite Of What Other People Say Or Believe, Look In A Mirror, Then Say This Magic Word: 'hello.'

We Must Honor Our Dragons, Encourage Them To Be Worthy Destroyers, Expect They'll Strive To Cut Us Down. It Is Their Duty To Ridicule Us, It Is Their Job To Demean Us, To Force Us If They Can To Stop Being Different! And When We Walk Our Way No Matter Their Fire And Their Fury, Our Dragons Shrug When We're Out Of Sight, Return To Their Card-games Philosophical: 'ah Well, We Can't Toast 'em All...'

That Which Most Concerns And Worries You - Your Survival - Is The Only Certainty You Have.

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.

Don't Be Dismayed By Good-byes. A Farewell Is Necessary Before You Can Meet Again. And Meeting Again, After Moments Or Lifetimes, Is Certain For Those Who Are Friends.

What I Love Doing Is Basically Two Things: I Love Flying Airplanes And I Love Communication.

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!

Any Powerful Idea Is Absolutely Fascinating And Absolutely Useless Until We Choose To Use It.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

If Perfection Is Stagnation, Then Heaven Is A Swamp.

To Me, One Of The Most Profound Questions We Can Ask Is: "so What?" And So What If There's An Indefinite Number Of Worlds With Alternate "us-es" In Them? The "so What," To Me, Comes Alive When I Ask Myself: "what If I Could Find A Way To Get In Touch With Those Alternate Mes Who Made Those Choices?" That Is, Persons Who, If I Saw Them Now, I Wouldn't Even Recognize Because Their Choices, Once Small, Have Multiplied To Make Them Such Different People.

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!

He Was Not Bone And Feather But A Perfect Idea Of Freedom And Flight, Limited By Nothing At All

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

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

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

Never Stop Feeling And Seeing And Being Excited With Great Things Like Air And Engines And Sounds Of Sunlight Within You.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m Here Not Because I Am Supposed To Be Here, Or Because I’m Trapped Here, But Because I’d Rather Be With You Than Anywhere Else In The World.

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Our Choices. We Feel Most Helpless When We've Made Choices By Default, When We Haven't Designed Our Lives On Our Own.

We [people] Have The Power To Destroy Ourselves As Well As The Environment. As A Species We Love What I'd Call Brinks-person-ship, Going Right To The Edge Of Disaster And Somehow Managing To Pull Back And Recover. But My Bet Is Still On The Creative And Playful And Positive In The Species. I Think We Will Manage To Survive And Gradually Turn Things Around.

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

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

You Can't Solve Problems For Someone Whose Problem Is That They Don't Want Problems Solved.

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

Anybody Who's Ever Mattered, Anybody Who's Ever Been Happy, Anybody Who's Ever Given Any Gift Into The World Has Been A Divinely Selfish Soul, Living For His Own Best Interest. No Exceptions.

The Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

The Great Thing About Writing Is, If You Don't Like The World, We'll Create A Different One.

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.

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?

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

A Moment Later Jonathan's Body Wavered In The Air, Shimmering, And Began To Go Transparent. "don't Let Them Spread Silly Rumors About Me, Or Make Me A God. O.k., Fletch? I'm A Seagull. I Like To Fly, Maybe...

Civilization... Wrecks The Planet From Seafloor To Stratosphere.

Two Thousand Years Ago, Five Thousand, They Didn't Have A Word For Imagination, And Faith Was The Best They Could Come Up With For A Pretty Solemn Bunch Of Followers.

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

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

You Are Never Given A Wish Without Also Being Given The Power To Make It Come True. You May Have To Work For It, However.

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.

When We Put Up With Any Situation We Don’t Have To Put Up With, It’s Not Because We’re Dumb. We Put Up With It, Because We Want The Lesson Only That Situation Can Teach, And We Want It More Than Freedom Myself.

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.

I Have A Way Of Finding What Is True For Me, And It’s Not Finished Yet.

In The United States Christmas Has Become The Rape Of An Idea.

The Only Thing That Shatters Dreams Is Compromise.

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'm A Writer As Rarely As Possible, When Forced By An Idea Too Lovely To Let Die Unwritten

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.

A Soulmate Is Someone Who Has Locks That Fit Our Keys, And Keys To Fit Our Locks. When We Feel Safe Enough To Open The Locks, Our Truest Selves Step Out And We Can Be Completely And Honestly Who We Are; We Can Be Loved For Who We Are And Not For Who We're Pretending To Be. Each Unveils The Best Part Of The Other. No Matter What Else Goes Wrong Around Us, With That One Person We're Safe In Our Own Paradise.

There Are No Mistakes. The Events We Bring Upon Ourselves, No Matter How Unpleasant, Are Necessary In Order To Learn What We Need To Learn; Whatever Steps We Take, They're Necessary To Reach The Places We've Chosen To Go.

The Highest Art Form Of All Is A Human Being In Control Of Himself And His Airplane In Flight, Urging The Spirit Of A Machine To Match His Own.

Your Only Obligation In Any Lifetime Is To Be True To Yourself.

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?

The Only Way To Avoid All Frightening Choices Is To Leave Society And Become A Hermit, And That Is A Frightening Choice.

Before You'll Change, Something Important Must Be At Risk.

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

The Airplane Is Just A Bunch Of Sticks And Wires And Cloth, A Tool For Learning About The Sky And About What Kind Of Person I Am, When I Fly. An Airplane Stands For Freedom, For Joy, For The Power To Understand, And To Demonstrate That Understanding. Those Things Aren't Destructable.

The Ideas Behind The Words Are Simple Ones That Work In Everyday Life; Find What We Most Want To Do; Do It, No Matter What; And In The Doing Be Guaranteed A Very Difficult And A Very Happy Lifetime.

Mortalhood Is A Fine State To Visit, But You'd Better Not Call It Home.

When One Individual Writer Sings Her Song Of Beauty, She Changes The Lives Of A Million Others.

All We See Of Someone At Any Moment Is A Snapshot Of Their Life, There In Riches Or Poverty, In Joy Or Despair. Snapshots Don't Show The Million Decisions That Led To That Moment.

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

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

A Tiny Change Today Brings A Dramatically Different Tomorrow.

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.

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

Then Be Sure Of One Thing: The Is Has Imagined It Quite A Bit Better Than You Have. The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

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.

Get This In Mind Early: We Never Grow Up.

Without My Airplane I Am An Ordinary Man, And A Useless One - A Trainer Without A Horse, A Sculptor Without Marble, A Priest Without A God. Without An Airplane I Am A Lonely Consumer Of Hamburgers.

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

We Don't Have Rights Until We Claim Them.

When I'm Writing It's As If I'm The Observer. It's As If That Computer Screen There -it Used To Be The Typewriter - Just Kind Of Dissolves And There's This Whirling Tunnel Of Mist And There's A Kind Of Proscenium Arch, And Then There Are My Characters, And They Say What They Say, And I Laugh Sometimes In Surprise At What They Say.

Our Disasters Have Been Some Of The Best Things That Ever Happened To Us. And What We Swore Were Blessings Have Been Some Of The Worst.

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

Your Friends Will Know You Better In The First Minute You Meet Than Your Acquaintances Will Know You In A Thousand Years.

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.

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].

We Can Lift Ourselves Out Of Ignorance, We Can Find Ourselves As Creatures Of Excellence And Intelligence And Skill.

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.

In Spite Of My Study, I Have Learned. Every Grand Religion Begins In Light. Yet Only Hearts Hold Light. Pages Cannot. I Have Paper In My Hands. Give These Words To The World And They Will Be Loved And Understood By Those Who Already Know Their Truth. The Truth Doesn't Burn. The Truth Waits For Anyone Who Wishes To Find It... Only These Pages Will Burn. At One With The Stars... With The Pages And Their Love... One With Everything That Is, That Ever Was Or Will Be. One.

True Enjoy Stories Never Ever Have Endings.

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.

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'.

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!

You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

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

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

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.

When We Come To The Last Moment Of This Lifetime And We Look Back Across It, The Only Thing That's Going To Matter Is 'what Is The Quality Of Our Love?'

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.

For Pilots Sometimes See Behind The Curtain, Behind The Veil Of Gossamer Velvet, And Find The Truth Behind Man, The Force Behind A Universe.

Everything Of This Life As A Mortal Is Fiction. It Seems Real, But...

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

If We Believe That We're Separated From Someone, Though They Stand In The Same Room With Us, We're Separated. If We Believe That We're Together, If We Believe That They Are With Us, If We Listen Through Our Inner Senses, There's A Chance We'll Hear.

Flying Prevails Whenever A Man And His Airplane Are Put To A Test Of Maximum Performance.

There Is A Family Of Us Who Have This Yearning For A Kind Of Excellence That We Can Manifest Every Day Of Our Lives, A Family Who Wants To Believe We're Not Pawns, We're Not Victims On This Planet, That Knows We Have The Power Within Us Here And Now To Change The World We See Around Us!

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

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.

I'm Absolutely Convinced That This Is A World Of Appearances, Not Reality. There's One Reality And That's Light And Love. When Some Say, We Create Our Own Reality, I Always Demur And Say, "please, Would You Mind Adjusting That A Little Bit? We Create Our Own Appearances." We Become Master Of Appearances And As We Change Our Thought, We Will See The Appearances Around Us Change. That Gives Us This Huge Sense Of Dominion And Power And Control Over Our World.

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

Part One: I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy. Part Two: Everybody Else Is Free To Do Whatever They Feel Like Doing, For A Living. Part Three: 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.

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

One School Is Finished, And The Time Has Come For Another To Begin.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

What A Delighted Fascination It Is, To Stand Aside And Watch Our Dearest Friend Perform On Stage Without Us.

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

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.

It Had Never Gotten Old For Him, Flying. Never Gone Boring. Every Engine Start Was A New Adventure, Guiding The Spirit Of A Lovely Machine Back Into Life; Every Takeoff Blending His Spirit With Its Own To Do What's Never Been Done In History, To Lift Away From The Ground And Fly.

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