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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?

-Richard Bach

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What A Story That

Richard Bach

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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?

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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.

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.

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 [people] Have A Teacher! The Teacher Is Ourselves! We Already Know Everything We Need To Know - Our Challenge Is To Discover That We Know It. Turning To Gurus, I Think, We Become Guru-dependent, No Different From Drug-dependent, Alcohol-dependent - Needing An Outside Force To Control Our Lives.

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.

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.

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

Illusions Of Life

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

There's So Much To Learn! And Just When We Think, "i've Got It. I Really Understand What's Going On," We're Shown A Whole New Stage Set On Which To Play.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

Never Had I Understood That I Command, With Absolute Authority, The Ship Of My Life! I Decide Its Mission And Rules And Discipline, At My Word Waits Every Tool And Sail, Every Cannon, The Strength Of Every Soul On Board. I'm Master Of A Team Of Passionate Skills To Sail Me Through Hell's Own Jaws The Second I Nod The Direction To Steer.

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

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

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

The Mark Of Your Ignorance Is The Depth Of Your Belief In Injustice And Tragedy. What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World, The Master Calls The Butterfly.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Every Step In Every Proud Life Is A Run From Safety To The Dark, And The Only Thing To Trust Is What We Think Is True.

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.

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

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

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

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

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

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.

A Tiny Change Today Brings A Dramatically Different Tomorrow.

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

Hate Is Love Without Enough Data.

We Don't Have Rights Until We Claim Them.

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

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

Whatever Happens On The Surface, It's Leading Us In A Direction. That Beautiful Core Within Us That Is Our Character Will Make Choices That Will Inevitably Leads Us To A Higher Understanding Of Who We Are And Why We're Here. And It's Best To Be Aware Of That While It's Happening.

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

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 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 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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Listen To What You Know Instead Of What You Fear.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Compelling Reason Will Never Convince Blinding Emotion.

Compelling Reason

True Love Stories Never Have Endings.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Personal Experiences

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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...'

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.

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

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!

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'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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Like Everything Else, Fletcher. Practice.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

For Most Gulls It Was Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight.

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.

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

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

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.

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

You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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."

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.

True Enjoy Stories Never Ever Have Endings.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

Whatever Enchants Also Guides And Protects.

The Only Thing That Shatters Dreams Is Compromise.

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

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

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

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.

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

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

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.

No Matter How Qualified Or Deserving We Are, We Will Never Reach A Better Life Until We Can Imagine It For Ourselves And Allow Ourselves To Have It.

Every Problem Has A Gift For You In Its Hands.

I Am Tired Of Clinging. Though I Cannot See It With My Eyes, I Trust That The Current Knows Where It Is Going. I Shall Let Go, And Let It Take Me Where It Will. Clinging, I Shall Die Of Boredom.

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

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.

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

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

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

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

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

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

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

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.

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

There’s No Disaster That Can’t Become A Blessing, And No Blessing That Can’t Become A Disaster.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth.

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.

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.

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."

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