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

-Richard Bach

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What A Delighted Fascination

Richard Bach

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

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Why? What Is So Wonderful About Mass Murder That Nobody In The History Of The World Has Ever Fond Any Smarter Solution To Problems Than Killing Everybody Who Doesn’t Agree? Is That The Limit Of Human Intelligence?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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...'

By Your Choice Dwell You Now In The World Which You Have Created. What You Hold In Your Heart Shall Be True, And What You Most Admire, That Shall You Become.

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

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.

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.

What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World The Master Calls A Butterfly.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thought Plus Belief Equals Manifestation.

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.

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It. If You Turned To This Page, You're Forgetting That What Is Going On Around You Is Not Reality. Think About That.

Use It Or Lose It

You've Given Up Your Whole Life To Be The Person You Are Now. Is It Worth It?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Most Gulls Don't Bother To Learn More Than The Simplest Facts Of Flight - How To Get From Shore To Food And Back Again

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.

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

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

Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them.

Illusions Of Life

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?

Whatever Enchants Also Guides And Protects.

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

The Best Way To Pay For A Lovely Moment Is To Enjoy It.

Reality Is Divinely Indifferent.

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

If Perfection Is Stagnation, Then Heaven Is A Swamp.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Space For What You Want Is Already Filled With What You Settled For Instead.

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

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

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

One Of The Great Cosmic Laws, I Think, Is That Whatever We Hold In Our Thought Will Come True In Our Experience. When We Hold Something, Anything, In Our Thought, Then Somehow Coincidence Leads Us In The Direction That We've Been Wishing To Lead Ourselves.

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

Rarely Do Members Of The Same Family Grow Up Under The Same Roof.

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

True Enjoy Stories Never Ever Have Endings.

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

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

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

Personal Experiences

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.

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.

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

A Tiny Change Today Brings A Dramatically Different Tomorrow.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

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 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.

Passionately Obsessed By Anything We Love - An Avalanche Of Magic Flattens The Way Ahead, Levels, Rules, Reasons, Dissents, Bears Us With It Over Chasms, Fears, Doubts. Without The Power Of That Love.

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.

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'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.

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

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

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

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

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

A Cloud Does Not Know Why It Moves In Just Such A Direction And At Such A Speed, It Feels An Impulsion... This Is The Place To Go Now. But The Sky Knows The Reasons And The Patterns Behind All Clouds, And You Will Know, Too, When You Lift Yourself High Enough To See Beyond Horizons.

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

Part Of Us Is Always The Observer, And No Matter What, It Observes. It Watches Us. It Does Not Care If We Are Happy Or Unhappy, If We Are Sick Or Well, If We Live Or Die. It’s Only Job Is To Sit There On Our Shoulder And Pass Judgment On Whether We Are Worthwhile Human Beings.

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.

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.

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

Law Of Attraction

Of Course I'm A Fake. We're All Fakes On This Whole World, Pretending To Be Something We're Not. We Are Not Just Bodies Walking Around, Not Just Atoms, Molecules. We Are Unkillable, Undestroyable Ideas Of The Is, No Matter How Much We Believe Otherwise.

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

"what Is My Highest Sense Of Right?" We Can Ask At Any Decision Point In Our Lives And Not Worry About If This Is Going To Lose Us A Lot Of Money Or Is This Going To Make Us A Lot Of Money Or Whatever.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

What Would Our Lives Be Like Without Tests, Odds Against Us, Adventure, Risk?

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

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.

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.

Listen To What You Know Instead Of What You Fear.

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.

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

I Want To Be Very Close To Someone I Respect And Admire And Have Somebody Who Feels The Same Way About Me.

Love Relationship

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If We Change In Different Directions, Then We Don't Have Any Future Anyway, Do We? I Think It's Possible For Two People To Change Together, To Grow Together And Enrich Instead Of Diminish Each Other. The Sum Of One And One, If They're The Right Ones, Can Be Infinity! But So Often One Person Drags The Other Down; One Person Wants To Go Up Like A Balloon And The Other's A Dead Weight. I've Always Wondered What It Would Be Like If Both People, If A Woman And A Man Both Wanted To Go Up Like Balloons!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

How Is It We’re The Lucky Ones, Living A Life That The Children-we-were Took For Dreams?

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.

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.

There Is A Sense Of Oneness That From Time To Time I'm Aware Of In My Life. Certainly Not All The Time, And There Are Times When I Get Frightened And When I Get Upset. But At The Best Of Times, It's A Personal Oneness.

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

We Don't Have Rights Until We Claim Them.

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

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

The Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

I Think There's An Invisible Principle Of Living Too. If We Believe We're Guided Through Every Step Of Our Lives, We Are. It's A Lovely Sight, Watching It Work.

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

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?'

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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

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.

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

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!

Thousands Of Volumes Have Been Written About Aviation, But We Do Not Automatically Have Thousands Of True And Special Friends In Their Authors. That Rare Writer Who Comes Alive On A Page Does It By Giving Of Himself, By Writing Of Meanings, And Not Just Of Fact Or Of Things That Have Happened To Him. The Writers Of Flight Who Have Done This Are Usually Found Together In A Special Section On Private Bookshelves.

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

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

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

We Can Start Working With Time If You Wish," Chiang Said, "till You Can Fly The Past And The Future. And Then You Will Be Ready To Begin The Most Difficult, The Most Powerful, The Most Fun Of All. You Will Be Ready To Begin To Fly Up And Know The Meaning Of Kindness And Of Love.

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 We Agree That The World Is Not What It Seems, Then We Have An Important Question: What Shall We Do About It?

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

He Who Argues For His Limitations Gets To Keep Them

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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