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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...'

-Richard Bach

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We Must Honor Our

Richard Bach

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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...'

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

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I Think The Source Of Our Sorrow And The Source Of Our Joy Are Intimately Entwined. Our Sorrow Is That We Have Forgotten Who We Are, We Have Forgotten We Are One With That Source Of All Life - Absolutely Indestructible, Perfect, Joyful. The Source Of Our Joy Is When We Remember That.

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.

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Law Of Attraction

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

Did You Ever Feel That You Were Missing Someone You Had Never Met?

Missing Someone

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

Remember The High Board At The Swimming Pool? After Days Of Looking Up At It You Finally Climbed The Wet Steps To The Platform. From There, It Was Higher Than Ever. There Were Only Two Ways Down: The Steps To Defeat Of The Dive To Victory. You Stood On The Edge, Shivering In The Hot Sun, Deathly Afraid. At Last You Leaned Too Far Forward, It Was Too Late For Retreat, And You Dived. The High Board Was Conquered, And You Spent The Rest Of The Day Diving. Climbing A Thousand High Boards, We Demolish Fear, And Turn Into Human Beings.

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

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Jonathan Seagull

Whatever We Hold In Thought Comes True In Our Experience; Like Attracts Like; We Experiment With The Law Of Changing Appearances, To Make Our Outer World Reflect Our Inner.

No One Does Anything Uncharacteristic Of Who They Are.

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?

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

When You Dream, All The Scenery, Characters, Events, Perils, And Outcomes Are Built From Your Own Consciousness, The Darks And Oppressions As Well As The Delights. Same With The World Awake, Though It Takes You Longer To Build It.

You Teach Best That Which You Need Most To Learn.

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

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.

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

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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?

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 Only Thing That's Real In Any Universe [is] That Brilliant Fire Of Love That Burns To The Exclusion Of Everything Else. As We Recognize The Presence Of Love, We Break Through The Wall Of Grief That Would Try To Convince Us That The Dear Soul With Whom We Have Learned And Loved So Much No Longer Exists, Or That She Or He Cannot Speak With Us. There Is No Wall That Love Cannot Vaporize. We May Believe In Death, Love Doesn't.

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

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.

How Can We Resent The Life We've Created For Ourselves?

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.

Real Integrity Is Doing The Right Thing, Knowing That Nobody's Going To Know Whether You Did It Or Not. Sooner Or Later, Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

With Every Choice You Risk The Life You Would Have Had; With Every Decision, You Lose It.

Know That Ever About You Stands The Reality Of Love, And Each Moment You Have The Power To Transform Your World By What You Have Learned.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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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.

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

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?

Your Only Obligation In Any Lifetime Is To Be True To Yourself. Being True To Anyone Else Or Anything Else Is Not Only Impossible, But The Mark Of A Fake Messiah.

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!

We Thought Humble And Proud At The Same Time, All At Once In Love Again With This Painful Bittersweet Lovely Thing Called Flight.

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

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

Nothing Good Is A Miracle, Nothing Lovely Is A Dream.

Argue For Your Limitations, And Sure Enough, They're Yours. Do You Think, If You Say The Word "impossible" Enough Times, That Difficult Things Will Suddenly Become Easier For You?

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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.

Every Real Teacher Is Myself In Disguise.

There Are Grand Rewards For Those Who Pick The High Hard Roads, But Those Rewards Are Hidden By Years.

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

True Love Stories Never Have Endings.

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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?

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Live Never To Be Ashamed If Anything You Say Or Do Is Published Around The World, Even If What Is Said Is Not True.

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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.

I Don't Think Any Of My Books Tell The Reader Anything New. But They Do Remind, In A Time That Is Strident And Screeching About The Limitations Of This World And All The Trouble We Can Get Ourselves Into.

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

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.

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.

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...'

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.

Individuals Somehow Are Led To Find My Books At Times That Are Important To Them. The Mail That I Get Very, Very Often Will Say, "i Was At A Difficult Time In My Life, And Someone Gave Me A Copy."

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

Reality Is Divinely Indifferent.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Sense Of Family Is Enormously Important To Me. In The Larger Sense, We're All Of Us Family; We're All Of Us Soulmates.

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.

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.

The Books Remind Us That Way Down Deep In Our Hearts, Part Of Us Knows That We Are Creatures Of Light And We Cannot Be Touched Or Destroyed By Anything Made Out Of Atoms Or Destroyed At All - That Light Is Indestructible. And We May Reflect That And Express That In Multiple Trillions Of Discrete Ways, But Nevertheless, That Indestructible Sense Of Joyful Capacity To Express Life And Express Love Is Always There.

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

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

Your Life Is A Treasure And You Are So Much More Than You Know.

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

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.

Next To God, Love Is The Word Most Mangled In Every Language. The Highest Form Of Regard Between Two People Is Friendship, And When Love Enters, Friendship Dies.

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.

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.

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When We're Born On This Planet, We're Taught To Believe That What We See Is Real. But As We Grow In Understanding, We Recognize First That We've Been Hypnotized By That Reaching, And Second That It's Within Our Power To De-hypnotize Ourselves. And As We Do That, The Illusion Appears To Change, To Come In Harmony With What We Most Value. If We Most Value Love, We Will Begin To See More And More Love And Joy And Adventure-creative Expressions Of Life Shimmering Everywhere Around Us.

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.

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 You're Always Looking At Someone Else, Trying To Imitate Them, How Can Your Natural Gifts Ever Emerge?

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

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

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.

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

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

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

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.

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

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

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

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

The Simplest Questions Are The Most Profound. Where Were You Born? Where Is Your Home? Where Are You Going? What Are You Doing? Think About These Once In A While And Watch Your Answers Change.

Instead Of Our Drab Slogging Forth And Back To The Fishing Boats, There's Reason To Live! We Can Lift Ourselves Out Of Ignorance, We Can Find Ourselves As Creatures Of Excellence And Intelligence And Skill. We Can Learn To Be Free! We Can Learn To Fly!

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.

We Love Action And Adventure, But We Use It To Go Out And Start Wars And Kill People.

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

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

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

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

Finding Yourself

A Drug For Everything Is Madness. Legal Or Not, Prescribed Or Not, Over-counter Under-counter Bought For Blood On Street-corners-every Pill Separates Us From Knowing Our Own Completion And From Being Taught By What's True.

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

Ask Yourself The Secret Of Your Success. Listen To Your Answer, And Practice It.

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

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

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!

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 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.

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 Wait All These Years To Find Someone Who Understands Us, I Thought, Someone Who Accepts Us As We Are, Someone With A Wizard's Power To Melt Stone To Sunlight, Who Can Bring Us Happiness In Spite Of Trials, Who Can Face Our Dragons In The Night, Who Can Transform Us Into The Soul We Choose To Be. Just Yesterday I Found That Magical Someone Is The Face We See In The Mirror: It's Us And Our Homemade Masks.

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

It’s Okay Is A Cosmic Truth…it’s Okay. If There Were Nothing Here For Us To Learn, We Wouldn’t Bother To Pay The Fare.

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

You Choose, You Live The Consequences. Every Yes, No, Maybe, Creates The School You Call Your Personal Experience.

Personal Experiences

The River Delights To Lift Us Free, If Only We Dare Let Go.

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.

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.

Money Is A Great Isolator. In Fact, We Don't Even Need To Have Money Or Make Money, We Only Need To Be Perceived As Having Money To Be Isolated In The Strangest Ways From Most Of The Community Around Us. It Reaches The Point Where A Person With Money Spends A Great Deal Of Time Reacting To People Who Are Reacting To The Money.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

If It's Never Our Fault, We Can't Take Responsibility For It. If We Can't Take Responsibility For It, We'll Always Be Its Victim.

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

The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

To Learn Anything, You Must Put Aside The Safety Of Your Ignorance.

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.

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 Was Morning, And The New Sun Sparkled Gold Across The Ripples Of A Gentle Sea.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Argue For Your Limitations, And Sure Enough They're Yours.

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?

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.

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

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.

I Had Experiences Along The Way That Helped Me To Realize That Letting Go Was The Way That Worked For Me To Find Something That I, Personally, As A Reader, Love To Read.

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.

Not Being Known Doesn't Stop The Truth From Being True.

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

And Behind It Lies Not Blind Chance But A Principle That Works To Help Us Understand, A Thousand "coincidences" And Friends Come To Show Us The Way When The Problem Seems Too Hard To Solve Alone. Problems For Overcoming. Freedom For Proving. And, As Long As We Believe In Our Dream, Nothing By Chance.

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

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.

A Tiny Change Today Brings A Dramatically Different Tomorrow.

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.

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."

Reason And Intellect Are Opening Wedges In An Understanding Of Reality.

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

Testing Ourselves Over And Again, Learning Love And Love And Love!

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

The Only Thing That Shatters Dreams Is Compromise.

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

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

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

Wrong Turns Are As Important As Right Turns. More Important, Sometimes.

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.

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

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self.

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

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.

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

All Of Us Are Called By Something In This World That Attracts Us. And It Doesn't Matter What It Is - You Can Be An Engine Mechanic Or An Aviator Or You Can Be Someone Who Loves Their Flower Garden Or The World Of Commerce Or Sailboats.

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