Richard Bach Quotes

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

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 will see the way to fly.

You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.

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.

Don't be dismayed at 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.

I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

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.

You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way".

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours.

We teach best what we most need to learn.

Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.

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.

That’s why love stories don’t have endings! They don’t have endings because love doesn’t end.

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

Boredom between two people doesn't come from being together physically. It comes from being apart mentally and spiritually.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you're alive it isn't.

You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

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.

Bad things are not the worst things that an happen to us. NOTHING is the worst thing that can happen to us.

A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.

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.

Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now.

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. 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.

The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy

When you have come to the edge of all the light you have And step into the darkness of the unknown Believe that one of the two will happen to you Either you'll find something solid to stand on Or you'll be taught how to fly!

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.

Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes.

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

Listen,' he said. 'It's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.

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.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true.

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 only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.

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.

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.

True love stories never have endings.

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy choice.

Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.

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.

Look in the mirror and one thing is sure: what we see is not who we are.

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.

The gull sees farthest who flies highest

This is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete, if you are alive, it isn't.

The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, 'I've got responsibilities.

Of course there’s destiny, but destiny doesn’t push you where you don’t want to go. You’re the ones who choose. Destiny is up to you.

Heaven is not a place, and it's not a time. Heaven is being perfect.

One way to pick a future is to believe it’s inevitable.

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.

You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect. -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.

There’s no disaster that can’t become a blessing, and no blessing that can’t become a disaster.

if you argue for your limitations they are yours

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?

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

It doesn’t take time to change once you understand the problem...Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn’t take long to drop it, does it?

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world -- even if what is published is not true.

Next to ‘God’, ‘love’ is the word most mangled in every language.

To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

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

One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.

Character comes from following our highest sense of right, from trusting ideas without being sure they’ll work.

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?

How easy it is to be compassionate when it's yourself you see in trouble.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it.

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.

You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

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!

The simplest things are often the truest.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was.

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.

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

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.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.We fear we will not find love,and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we don't have love we will be unhappy.

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.

He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form. "Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?" "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other.

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.

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.

Amazing. You were so attached to it, and it still disappeared for you." “Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high...” “Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.

Like attracts like. 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.

Have you ever felt so at one with the world, with the universe, with everything that is, that you were overcome with love? That is reality. That is the truth. What we make of it is up to us, as the painting of the sunrise is up to the artist. In our world humanity has strayed from that love. It lives hatred and power struggles and manipulations of the earth itself for its own narrow reasons. Continue and no one will see the sunrise. The sunrise will always exist, of course, but people on earth will know nothing of it and finally even stories of its beauty will fade from our knowing.

Sully,for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, " and don't be foolish! What are we trying to practice everyday? If our friendship depends on things like 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?

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.

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard. I don’t know where you are, but you’re living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I’m touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we’ll walk through and we’ll be full of a future and of a past and we’ll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can’t meet now, I don’t know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we’ll be caught in something so bright...and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet.