Attracting Abundance Quotes

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Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.' 'Seventeen,' Gus corrected. 'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard. 'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. 'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.' I was kind of crying by then.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
Reality is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about.
Stephen Richards
If you always attach positive emotions to the things you want, and never attach negative emotions to the things you don't, then that which you desire most will invariably come your way.
Matt D. Miller
An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others.
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
Doing the tough things sets winners apart from losers.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
If you think you can then you can.
Stephen Richards
Grateful souls focus on the happiness and abundance present in their lives and this in turn attracts more abundance and joy towards them.
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
Never surrender your hopes and dreams to the fateful limitations others have placed on their own lives. The vision of your true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the naysayers and the doom prophets. Judge not by their words, but accept advice based on the evidence of actual results. Do not be surprised should you find a complete absence of anything mystical or miraculous in the manifested reality of those who are so eager to advise you. Friends and family who suffer the lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfillment and prosperity in their own lives really have no business imposing their self-limiting beliefs on your reality experience.
Anthon St. Maarten
Be yourself and become wealthy!
Stephen Richards
There is nothing around me but money, money, money.
Stephen Richards
If you take any step, no matter how small it is, towards achieving your dreams then you will surely find the right path and reach the abundance that lies in store for you.
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
With every challenge you face, there is an opportunity hidden that will lead you towards the path of wealth and abundance.
Stephen Richards (Be First: Achieve Every Dream)
Have faith in the universe and its capability to lead you to the path of abundance.
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
You are the energy you attract. Whether you are aware of that or not, everything you come up against is teaching you about that part within yourself. Listen carefully, it's a hint to a better you.
Nikki Rowe
Once we open our eyes to the infinite magic that the universe has in abundance, we are sure to be enthralled by what we see and this miraculous creation gets us closer to our dreams and to the world as a whole.
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
Without enthusiasm then what we have surrounded ourselves with becomes worthless.
Stephen Richards
See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it. It always works, it works every time with every person
Bob Proctor
When you focus on lack and scarcity and what you don’t have, you fuss about it with your family, you discuss it with your friends, you tell your children that you don’t have enough - “We don’t have enough for that, we can’t afford that” - then you’ll never be able to afford it, because you begin to attract more of what you don’t have. If you want abundance, if you want prosperity, then focus on abundance. Focus on prosperity. (Lisa Nichols) Many people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the great home, they want their business to work, they want all these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having these outer things does not necessarily guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. So we go for these outer things thinking they’re going to bring us happiness , but it’s backward. You need to go for the inner joy, the inner peace, the inner vision first, and then all of the outer things appear. (Marci Shimoff)
Rhonda Byrne (The Secret (The Secret, #1))
Becoming wealthy is about accumulating wealth.
Stephen Richards
To control your life, control your mind. To control your mind, control your breath.
Stephen Richards
Do not invest time and money into yourself to have others completely destroy it!
Stephen Richards
There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living, whose reason for being might be geographical but whose growth is based on industry, jobs. Detroit has its natural attractions: lakes all over the place, an abundance of trees and four distinct seasons for those who like variety in their weather, everything but hurricanes and earth-quakes. But it’s never been the kind of city people visit and fall in love with because of its charm or think, gee, wouldn’t this be a nice place to live.
Elmore Leonard
The gratitude that you feel leads to faith in the abundance and with every resonance that radiates from your mind more strong feelings of faith start to reside in you.
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
The only secret of wealth creation is knowing how to use Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
Tell me your story and I will get back your life.
Stephen Richards
No matter what your wishes, they are not crazy so long as they are not crazy to you!
Stephen Richards
Willful blindness sees no end of damage done.
Stephen Richards
Respond to negative thoughts as you would to small children who do not know any better; simply smile and show them a better way to be.
Sanaya Roman (Creating Money: Attracting Abundance)
Oh dear," Laurence said; he felt rather awkward explaining that the main attraction was the abundance of harbor prostitutes and cheap liquor. "Well, a city has a great many people in it, and thus various entertainments provided in close proximity," he tried. "Do you mean such as more books?" Temeraire said.
Naomi Novik (His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, #1))
Human beings are incredibly slow, Cosmic Ordering is incredibly fast!
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Connection: Change your life within minutes!)
It has taken me a lot of years, but I find silence is sometimes the best answer.
Stephen Richards
Run and hide or rise and shine ...
Stephen Richards
Become your own success story, not someone else's.
Stephen Richards
In hundreds of studies, researchers have consistently found that we overestimate our own attractiveness, intelligence, work ethic, chances for success
Peter H. Diamandis (Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think)
Remove whatever you no longer need in your life, to make room for what you do need in your life.
Avis J. Williams
Stop harboring grudges against those who have wronged you, it just holds you back when you really want to be in the NOW.
Stephen Richards
Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more." "Seventeen," Gus corrected. "I'm assuming you've got some time, you interrupting bastard. "I'm telling you," Isaac continued, "Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. "But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him." [...] "And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls’ shirts and stuff. Augustus, my friend, Godspeed." Augustus nodded for a while, his lips pursed, and then gave Isaac a thumbs-up. After he'd recovered his composure, he added, "I would cut the bit about seeing through girls' shirts." Isaac was still clinging to the lectern. He started to cry. He pressed his forehead down to the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, "Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
Your reality is a reflection of yourself
Avis J. Williams
Positive thinking without any thought is wasted ...
Stephen Richards
In a culture of hyper-consumption the advertising industry has brainwashed many people into believing they can raise their status just by driving a particular brand of whatever it is they are pushing at you.
Stephen Richards
When you live as a fountain of abundant love, instead of an empty well waiting to be filled by a lover, you will attract your SoulMate.
Annette Vaillancourt (How to Manifest Your SoulMate with EFT: Relationship as a Spiritual Path)
There is no eleventh hour with Cosmic Ordering, only the golden hour.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
Follow your heart. It will lead you to where you need to be.
Avis J. Williams
Thoughts create emotions, emotions create feelings and feelings create behaviour. So it’s very important that our thoughts are positive, to attract the right people, events and circumstances into our lives.
Avis J. Williams (The Psychic Mind: A Practical Guide to Psychic Development & Spiritual Growth)
The universe will bring people whatever they want…Let the magic happen. It’s always there. Abundance and love are always there. Believe in the highest good. There is a higher essence to everything. The realm you’re in has a heaviness that mutes energy. You can penetrate through it, no matter how dark and heavy. Sometimes it has nothing to do with karma. Just don’t forget to keep it open. Don’t get too bogged down…Prosperity can happen at any time. I want to give you everything that you need.-Kuan Yin
Hope Bradford (Beneficial Law of Attraction: the Manifestation Teachings (Kuan Yin Law of Attraction Techniques based on "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin))
Manifesting your desires requires an understanding of the universe’s abundance and inherently giving nature. If you ask from a position of fear or desperation, you are sending out your fear and desperation, and the universe, giving, reflecting, and non-judgmental as it is, will send those right back at you.
Stephen Richards
Manifesting happens everyday whether we want it to or not, we are always attracting things and people to us. The absolute key to Manifesting without missing a mark, is to do so with confident intention and complete awareness.
Sereda Aleta Dailey (The Art of Manifesting Abundance)
Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about. Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found that what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions. Only inwardness remained to be explored. Only the human soul remain terra incognita. This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
Focus on what you can do right now, not what you can't do right now
Avis J. Williams
To change your life, you need to become aware of yourself
Avis J. Williams
Harnessing the unique sex energy that can only arise through sexual expression can awaken multidimensional awareness and provide you with your desired goal.
Stephen Richards
Everybody talks about being rich, Cosmic Ordering does something about it.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
Often the only difference between success and failure is not using Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard To get her dear dog a bone. Though the cupboard was bare, When she focused elsewhere Her heart overflowed with fun!
Kristen McKee (Nursery Rhymes for the Unconditional and Unschooled)
If you do not completely accept yourself, you can not love yourself fully. It would be hard to love anything unconditionally.
Avis J. Williams
The universe only exist within us. All of what is outside of us is also within us.
Avis J. Williams
The real winners I've met in life weren't necessarily skilled or perfect. They just had the tenacity to never, ever give up.
Curtis Rivers (Seven Paths to Freedom)
I am grateful for Divine friends, healing energy, interconnectedness, firm hugs, soft kisses, moments of contentment, and growing wisdom.
Dr. Ivy Norris
Ignite the light within you, it will make your world brighter.
Avis J. Williams
Your thoughts are like a magnet; they determine what you attract. So if you want to live in abundance, stop focusing on what you lack!
Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
We can’t control everything that happens to us, but we can control how we respond to things we can’t control.
Avis J. Williams
The universe is infinite, and abundance is the default nature of things.
Stephen Richards
Many surround themselves with luminaries, but in so doing they dull their own sparkle. If you want to shine bright, look to the heavens and see how the brightest star always stands apart from those lesser shining stars.
Stephen Richards
The universe will never 'take away' something that is for our highest and greatest good so when we 'lose' something, or our lives shift, it is always for our benefit. It’s unwrapping a surprise present from the universe.
Caroline A. Shearer (Raise Your Financial Vibration: Tips and Tools to Embrace Your Infinite Spiritual Abundance (Raise Your Vibration min-e-book™ series, #2))
Think of yourself with abundance and you will have it. Do not wish for it, do not hope for it. The law of attraction is within all of us. Tap into the divine source and become divine as well. Know that you already have it and it shall be so!!!
Kenneth G. Ortiz
you have a meaningful contribution to make to the world….You have a role to play that no one else on the planet could fill. The special contribution you came to make is your life’s work. When you are doing that work, you are following your higher path, and your life will be filled with increasing joy, abundance, and well-being.
Sanaya Roman (Creating Money: Attracting Abundance)
Never fear Love's absence in your life, because it already exists within you, in great abundance.
Eleesha (The Soulful Pathway to Love: 100 channeled affirmations and quotes to attract true love into your life (The Soulful Pathway, #3))
In a universe of unlimited possibility and abundance, I had attracted what I was ready to receive.
Donna Labermeier
When life gives you lemons, use Cosmic Ordering!
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
In the beginning man was poor, then along came Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
A clever person solves a problem; a wise person uses Cosmic Ordering!
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
Twenty years from now you will be disappointed you never used Cosmic Ordering today.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
Cosmic Ordering success sticks to you like mud to a blanket.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
There are more triumphs than defeats with Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
Believe and achieve with Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Connection: Change your life within minutes!)
On the road to success some will always expect tragedy ... ditch your doubts and experience success with Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Connection: Change your life within minutes!)
Whatever your desire, use Cosmic Ordering to get what you require!
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
A man may fail many times, and then he turns to Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Connection: Change your life within minutes!)
To fail is nothing, unless you continue to ignore Cosmic Ordering.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
There can be no belief if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
Abhinav Bhalla
The Law of Attraction takes into account all of your doubts. So, if you say you practice the Law of Attraction yet always carry an extra parachute with a Plan B, C, & D for those ‘just in case’ scenarios… you may be tricking yourself into believing that you believe when, in actuality, you are quite insecure. If you always have a backup plan ready – though it may come off as ‘prepared’ and ‘smart’ – it also implies that you do not fully trust that Spirit will always provide.
Alaric Hutchinson (Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life)
Say thank you for a beautiful life and be grateful for the small things of life which are miracles we have actually got used to. Gratitude banishes negativity from your life, brings happiness and you start living in abundance and attract more love and prosperity because of the way you think about your life.
Sanchita Pandey (Voyage to Happiness!)
How can it be? When we're naked and ashamed and alone in our brokenness, Christ envelops us with His intimate grace. When we're rejected and abandoned and feel beyond wanting, Jesus cups our face: "Come close, my Beloved." When we're dirty and tear-stained and despairing, Jesus Christ is attracted to us and proposes undying love: "All that you're carrying I take... and all that I am is yours." How do you ever get over that?
Ann Voskamp (The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life)
The spiritual laws of money are universal energy laws that create abundance: the principles of ebb and flow, unlimited thinking, giving and receiving, appreciation, honoring your worth, clear agreements, magnetism, and more.
Sanaya Roman (Creating Money: Attracting Abundance)
Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. “But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
The ability to feel and express genuine gratitude for the help given when it is needed most, for the gift or boon that is given at just the right time and under the right circumstances, is a way of surrendering one’s self to benevolent external forces.
Stephen Richards
Your hopes and dreams are like a giant helium balloon, tugging on your hand to take you above the clouds, to that quiet place of peace and contentment. All you have to do is stop resisting, to let go - and ALLOW your hopes and dreams to take you there.
Curtis Rivers (Seven Paths to Freedom)
ATTRACT THE ATTENTION OF ANGELS Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? —MATTHEW 26:53, ESV Fallen angels cause deviations to what God originally purposed. They operate much like the heavenly angels assigned to bring about the manifestation to your prayers, only in the exact opposite way. When they fell from heaven, their mission became perverted—so instead of bringing answers, they prohibit answers from manifesting. Your faith attracts the attention of heaven’s angels to work on your behalf, while your fear draws the demons of hell to work against you. Your words become the magnet that draws either heaven or hell into your situation. But always remember: no force is more powerful than the spoken Word of God. Lord, You give Your angels charge over me to keep me in all my ways. Satan comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but You have come that I may have life and that more abundantly. I will not play into the enemy’s hands by giving place to fear and anxiety. I will proclaim Your Word, because Your angels respond to Your Word. According to Psalm 34:7, let Your angels encamp round about me now and, Lord, deliver me in Jesus’s name. Amen.
Cindy Trimm (Commanding Your Morning Daily Devotional: Unleash God's Power in Your Life--Every Day of the Year)
If you cannot believe that something is possible, then you are not going to have it. But if you can have the smallest thought that it might be possible, you are already on your way to creating it. You cannot create something if you do not believe you can have it. Live out your dreams in your mind; picture or feel yourself getting what you want. Hear the words you will say to others and they will say to you when your dreams come true. Make your imaginings so real that they feel possible to create rather than like wishful and distant fantasies.
Sanaya Roman (Creating Money: Attracting Abundance)
To call the belief in substantial human equality a superstition is to insult superstition. It might be unwarranted to believe in leprechauns, but at least the person who holds to such a belief isn’t watching them not exist, for every waking hour of the day. Human inequality, in contrast, and in all of its abundant multiplicity, is constantly on display, as people exhibit their variations in gender, ethnicity, physical attractiveness, size and shape, strength, health, agility, charm, humor, wit, industriousness, and sociability, among countless other features, traits, abilities, and aspects of their personality, some immediately and conspicuously, some only slowly, over time. To absorb even the slightest fraction of all this and to conclude, in the only way possible, that it is either nothing at all, or a ‘social construct’ and index of oppression, is sheer Gnostic delirium: a commitment beyond all evidence to the existence of a true and good world veiled by appearances. People are not equal, they do not develop equally, their goals and achievements are not equal, and nothing can make them equal. Substantial equality has no relation to reality, except as its systematic negation. Violence on a genocidal scale is required to even approximate to a practical egalitarian program, and if anything less ambitious is attempted, people get around it (some more competently than others).
Nick Land (The Dark Enlightenment)
FEARS AND doubts repel prosperity. Abundance cannot get to a person who holds such a mental attitude. Things that are unlike in the mental realm repel one another. Trying to become prosperous while always talking poverty, thinking poverty, dreading it, predicting that you will always be poor, is like trying to cure disease by always thinking about it, picturing it, visualizing it, believing that you are always going to be sick, that you never can be cured. Nothing can attract prosperity but that which has an affinity for it, the prosperous thought, the prosperous conviction, the prosperity faith, the prosperity ambition.
Orison Swett Marden (How to Get What You Want)
Kuan Yin speaks on The Law of Prosperity and Abundance: “Continue down the path that makes you feel fulfilled. Those who continue on an unrewarding path for the sake of only monetary gain are displaying a lack of trust in life. Continuing in such a mistrustful way will only bring impoverishment. Following one’s heart, continuing on one’s divine path can bring abundance.
Hope Bradford (Beneficial Law of Attraction: the Manifestation Teachings (Kuan Yin Law of Attraction Techniques based on "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin))
In attempting to uphold scarcity, toil, poverty and subjugation against the growing potential for post-scarcity, leisure, abundance and freedom, capitalism increasingly emerges as the most irrational, indeed the most artificial, society in history. The society now takes on the appearance of a totally alien (as well as alienating) force. It emerges as the "other," so to speak, of humanity's deepest desires and impulses. On an ever-greater scale, potentiality begins to determine and shape one's everyday view of actuality, until a point is reached where everything about the society—including its most "attractive" amenities—seems totally insane, the result of a massive social lunacy.
Murray Bookchin (Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Working Classics))
All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” ... “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. ... The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity. Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. ... There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. ... Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.
Max Scheler
We don't have to see the whole road ahead of us to assure that we're going in the right direction. We take it in stride by staying positive, having faith, and maintaining that vision of happiness. Sometimes I obsess over trying to control the circumstances and wanting to always know the outcome, but the truth is, it is created all along the way. We aid it by our choices. The guidance is there. As soon as we take that single first step in the direction of our Destiny, signs are posted all along the way. All we have to do is keep our eyes peeled! If you want your life filled with abundance, be grateful for what you have. When you realize how abundant your life is already, you attract further abundance
Jason Micheal Ratliff
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann laments, We who are now the richest nation are today’s main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity—a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.
Craig Detweiler (iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives)
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their homes, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle, and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children whoe would be stricken suddently while at play and die within a few hours. There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example--where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs--the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were not lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died. In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.
Rachel Carson
Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, degree, necklaces, murex shells, the ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain--and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows.
Annie Dillard (The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New)
Now when the soul by its efforts to abandon outward objects and gather itself inwards, is brought into the influence of the central tendency, without any other exertion, it falls gradually by the weight of Divine Love into its proper centre; and the more passive and tranquil it remains, and the freer from self-motion and self-exertion, the more rapidly it advances, because the energy of the central attractive virtue is unobstructed and has full liberty for action. All our care and attention should, therefore, be to acquire inward recollection: nor let us be discouraged by the pains and difficulties we encounter in this exercise, which will soon be recompensed on the part of our God by such abundant supplies of grace as will render the exercise perfectly easy, provided we be faithful in meekly withdrawing our hearts from outward distractions and occupations, and returning to our centre with affections full of tenderness and serenity. When at any time the passions are turbulent, a gentle retreat inwards into a Present God easily deadens and pacifies them; and any other way of contending with them rather irritates than appeases them.
Jeanne Guyon (A Short and Easy Method of Prayer)
How did you even get in here?” I asked him. “Would you believe they leave the door open all night?” Gus asked. “Um, no,” I said. “As well you shouldn’t.” Gus smiled. “Anyway, I know it’s a bit self-aggrandizing.” “Hey, you’re stealing my eulogy,” Isaac said. “My first bit is about how you were a self-aggrandizing bastard.” I laughed. “Okay, okay,” Gus said. “At your leisure.” Isaac cleared his throat. “Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should have gotten more.” “Seventeen,” Gus corrected. “I’m assuming you’ve got some time, you interrupting bastard. “I’m telling you,” Isaac continued, “Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. “But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.” I was kind of crying by then. “And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls’ shirts and stuff. Augustus, my friend, Godspeed.” Augustus nodded for a while, his lips pursed, and then gave Isaac a thumbs-up. After he’d recovered his composure, he added, “I would cut the bit about seeing through girls’ shirts.” Isaac was still clinging to the lectern. He started to cry. He pressed his forehead down to the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, “Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy.” “Don’t swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus,” Gus said. “Goddamn it,” Isaac said again. He raised his head and swallowed. “Hazel, can I get a hand here?” I’d forgotten he couldn’t make his own way back to the circle. I got up, placed his hand on my arm, and walked him slowly back to the chair next to Gus where I’d been sitting. Then I walked up to the podium and unfolded the piece of paper on which I’d printed my eulogy. “My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…” I started crying. “Okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay.” I took a few breaths and went back to the page. “I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)