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

-Richard Bach

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What If Somebody Came

Richard Bach

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

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

Whatever Enchants Also Guides And Protects.

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

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

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.

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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.

You Don't Tell The Quality Of A Master By The Size Of His Crowds.

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!

We Magnetize Into Our Lives Whatever We Hold In Our Thought.

True Enjoy Stories Never Ever Have Endings.

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.

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

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

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

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

You Are Free To Smile In The Midst Of Massive Tests And Challenges, Knowing That You Have Chosen To Play This Game, And That You Have Dominion Over All The Appearances Of Earth.

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?

Life Tells You Nothing, It Shows You Everything.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Reality Is Divinely Indifferent.

I Was A Microscopic Life-form, Infinitely Large, Stumbled Backstage Of Its Playhouse, Caught A Nanosecond Glance Of Its Own Reality And Nearly Vaporized In Shock.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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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.

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

Cherish Yesterday, Dream Tomorrow, Live Today.

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

You Teach Best That Which You Need Most To Learn.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

A Tiny Change Today Brings Us To A Dramatically Different Tomorrow. There Are Grand Rewards For Those Who Pick The High Hard Roads, But Those Rewards Are Hidden By Years. Every Choice Is Made In The Uncaring Blind, No Guarantees From The World Around Us.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Live Enough Of What You've Always Dreamed Of Doing, And There's No Room Left For Feeling Bad.

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

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.

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.

Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

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

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.

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.

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

Our Soulmate Is The One Who Makes Life Come To Life.

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

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

It Is By Not Always Thinking Of Yourself, If You Can Manage It, That You Might Somehow Be Happy. Until You Make Room In Your Life For Someone As Important To You As Yourself, You Will Always Be Searching And Lost.

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

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Choices.

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.

Thought Plus Belief Equals Manifestation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Law Of Attraction

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

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 Gull Sees Farthest Who Flies Highest

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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...'

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.

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

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.

Every Problem In Your Life Carries A Gift Inside It.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

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.

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.

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.

He Who Argues For His Limitations Gets To Keep Them

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

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

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

Illusions Of Life

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.

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.

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

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

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

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.

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

With Every Decision That Anyone Makes, The World Changes. The Decision That We Give Our Consent To Is The One That Remains In Our Consciousness, But The One That We Didn't Make-that Alternate World Goes On In Its Own Direction. So There's Uncountable Numbers Of Alternate "us-es."

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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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