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

-Richard Bach

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When You Dream, All

Richard Bach

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

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

You Will Begin To Touch Heaven, Jonathan, In The Moment That You Touch Perfect Speed. And That Isn’t Flying A Thousand Miles An Hour, Or A Million, Or Flying At The Speed Of Light. Because Any Number Is A Limit, And Perfection Doesn’t Have Limits. Perfect Speed, My Son, Is Being There.

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

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.

From Time To Time It's Fun To Close Our Eyes, And In That Dark Say To Ourselves, 'i Am The Sorcerer, And When I Open My Eyes I Shall See A World That I Have Created, And For Which I And Only I Am Completely Responsible.' Slowly Then, Eyelids Open Like Curtains Lifting Stage-center. And Sure Enough, There's Our World, Just The Way We've Built It.

Heaven Isnot A Place, And It Isnot Atime.heaven Isbeing Perfect.

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.

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?

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

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

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

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift For You In Its Hands. You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

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

We're The Bridge Across Forever, Arching Above The Sea, Adventuring For Our Pleasure, Living Mysteries For The Fun Of It, Choosing Disasters Triumphs Challenges Impossible Odds, Testing Ourselves Over And Again, Learning Love And Love And Love!

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.

Thought Plus Belief Equals Manifestation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Every Problem Has A Gift For You In Its Hands.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

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

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...

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!

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

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.

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

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.

The Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

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.

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.

Some Religions Believe That There's A Hierarchy, That You Don't Have A Connection, But You Must Go Through The Shaman Or The Priest Or Whoever The Religious Leader Is. And That's What Surprises Me, That Some People Who Find A Huge Value In These Kinds Of Systems Also Seem To Enjoy Illusions. I Can't Figure It Out.

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.

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.

Jonathan Sighed. The Price Of Being Misunderstood, He Thought. They Call You Devil Or They Call You God.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

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.

Remember Where You Came From, Where You’re Going, And Why You Created The Mess You Got Yourself Into In The First Place. You're Going To Die A Horrible Death, Remember. It's All Good Training, And You'll Enjoy It More If You Keep The Facts In Mind. Take Your Dying With Some Seriousness, However. Laughing On The Way To Your Execution Is Not Generally Understood By Less-advanced Life-forms, And They'll Call You Crazy.

Remember Where You Came

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

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.

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.

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.

A Tiny Change Today Brings A Dramatically Different Tomorrow.

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

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.

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.

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

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

Hate Is Love Without Enough Data.

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.

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

Missing Someone

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

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

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

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

You Are Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Listen To What You Know Instead Of What You Fear.

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

Love Relationship

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.

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

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

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Flyers Fell A Certain Kinship With The Sight Of The Earth Unencrusted By Humanity, They Want To See It That Way In One Sweeping View, In Reassurance That Nature Still Exists On Her Own, Without A Chain-link Fence To Hold Her.

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.

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!

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

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

If Our Body Is A Perfect Expression Of Our Thought About Body, And If Our Thought About Body Is That It’s Condition Has Everything To Do With Inner Image And Nothing To Do With Time, Then We Don’t Have To Be Impatient For Being Too Young Or Frightened Of Being Too Old.

Get This In Mind Early: We Never Grow Up.

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.

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

Finding Yourself

Jonathan Seagull Discovered That Boredom And Fear And Anger Are The Reasons That A Gull's Life Is So Short, And With Those Gone From His Thought, He Lived A Long Fine Life Indeed.

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'.

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

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're All The Sons Of God, Or Children Of The Is, Or Ideas Of The Mind, Or However Else You Want To Say It.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Law Of Attraction

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.

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.

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

At Last, The Answer Why. The Lesson That Had Been So Hard To Find, So Difficult To Learn, Came Quick And Clear And Simple. The Reason For Problems Is To Overcome Them. Why, That’s The Very Nature Of Man, I Thought, To Press Past Limits, To Prove His Freedom. It Isn’t The Challenge That Faces Us, That Determines Who We Are And What We Are Becoming, But The Way We Meet The Challenge, Whether We Toss A Match At The Wreck Or Work Our Way Through It, Step By Step, To Freedom.

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

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.

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.

Anyone Desperate Enough For Suicide... Should Be Desperate Enough To Go To Creative Extremes To Solve Problems: Elope At Midnight, Stow Away On The Boat To New Zealand And Start Over, Do What They Always Wanted To Do But Were Afraid To Try.

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

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

I Have Always Wanted An Adventurous Life. It Took A Long Time To Realize That I Was The Only One Who Could Make An Adventurous Life Happen To Me.

Adventurous Life

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

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

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.

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.

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

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

True Love Stories Never Have Endings.

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

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

Reality Is Divinely Indifferent.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Law Of Attraction

Everything You've Said, Everything You Want To Believe Is Already True. You May Not Find Some Of It For A While, And Some Of It Might Take Longer Than That, But That Doesn't Stop It From Being True This Minute!

You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn.

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

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.

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.

When You're Flying, An Airplane Doesn't Care Who You Are; It Doesn't Care How Much Money You Make Or Don't Make. All It Cares About Is: How Well Do You Fly? How Well Do You Know The Airplane? How Well Do You Know The Sky?

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

Pain And Adversity Are Powerful Vehicles To Promote Personal Growth. Nothing Helps You Learn, Grow, And Evolve More Quickly. Nothing Offers You As Big An Opportunity To Reclaim More Of Your Authentic Power As A Person.

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.

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.

Not Being Known Doesn't Stop The Truth From Being True. You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World, The Master Calls A Butterfly. Learning Is Finding Out What We 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 And Teachers. The Best Way To Pay For A Lovely Moment Is To Enjoy It.

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

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

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

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.

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."

If Our Friendship Depends On Things Like Space And Time, Then When We Finally Overcome Space And Time, We've Destroyed Our Own Brotherhood! But Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now. And In The Middle Of Here And Now, Don't You Think That We Might See Each Other Once Or Twice?

If You Will Practice Being Fictional For A While, You Will Understand That Fictional Characters Are Sometimes More Real Than People With Bodies And Heartbeats.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Life Does Not Listen To Your Logic; It Goes On Its Own Way, Undisturbed. You Have To Listen To Life.

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.

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

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.

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

You Are Led, When You Share Your Loves, To An Enchanted Life Of Inner Happiness, Which Unsharing Others Cannot Know.

Inner Happiness

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

As You Believe, So It Is For You.

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.

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

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.

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