β
Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.
β
β
Anita Desai
β
Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
β
You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere (London Below, #1))
β
Wherever you will go,
I will let you down,
But this lullaby goes on.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
Look," Luke went on, "In all the years I've known him, there's always been exactly one place Simon wanted to be, and he's always fought like hell to make sure he got there and stayed there."
"Where's that?"
"Wherever you were.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)
β
Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.
β
β
Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12))
β
This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down.
β
β
Ben Okri (The Famished Road)
β
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
β
When you feel homesick,β he said, βjust look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.
β
β
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
β
I still have a lot to figure out, but the one thing I know is, wherever you are, thatβs where I belong. Iβll never belong anywhere like I belong with you.
β
β
Emily Henry (People We Meet on Vacation)
β
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
β
β
Stephen King
β
You can find magic
wherever you look.
Sit back and relax,
all you need is a book.
β
β
Dr. Seuss
β
Why do we have to listen to our hearts?" the boy asked.
"Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you will find your treasure.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
β
β
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffanyβs and Three Stories)
β
Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (What Happened to Goodbye)
β
There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again)
β
Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.
β
β
Matt Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive)
β
If every person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary - the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God.
β
β
R.J. Palacio (Wonder (Wonder, #1))
β
There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.
β
β
Stephen King (Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2))
β
Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.
β
β
Jim Elliot
β
[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.
β
β
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
β
We'll be there, Harry," said Ron
"What?"
"At your Aunt and Uncle's house," said Ron, "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going."
"No-" said Harry quickly; he hadn't counted on this, he had meant them to understand that he was undertaking the most dangerous journey alone.
"You said it once before," said Hermione quickly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we? We're with you whatever happens.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
β
If youβre twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel β as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them β wherever you go.
β
β
Anthony Bourdain (Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook)
β
In the meantime, I hope you will find your place, wherever you are. Even in the silence, I hope you will find the words you need to share.
β
β
Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1))
β
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
β
β
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
β
Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.
β
β
J. Krishnamurti
β
If I'm yours and you're mine...then I will take you, wherever and whenever I can.
β
β
S.C. Stephens (Thoughtless (Thoughtless, #1))
β
And from today onward, I want to never be separated from you. Wherever you go, I go. Even if that means going to hell itself, wherever you are, that's where I want to be. Forever.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (The Assassin and the Underworld (Throne of Glass, #0.4))
β
This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on...
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
If you have kindness in your heart, you offer acts of kindness to touch the hearts of others wherever you goβwhether they are random or planned. Kindness becomes a way of life.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
No more moving. I'm here. I'm wherever you are.
β
β
Stephanie Perkins (Lola and the Boy Next Door (Anna and the French Kiss, #2))
β
Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my homeβmy only home.
β
β
Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
β
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
β
β
Robert Fulghum
β
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
β
β
E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
β
Even when weβre apart tomorrow, Iβll be with you every step of the way. And every step afterβwherever that may be.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
β
You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes, you won't.
β
β
Dr. Seuss (Oh, the Places Youβll Go!)
β
Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.
β
β
Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
β
Wherever you are, however you got there, if it's good, you're meant to be there either because you earned it or life led you there and you were smart enough to hold on.
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Heaven and Hell (Heaven and Hell, #1))
β
You can dance in the storm. Don't wait for the rain to be over before because it might take too long. You can can do it now. Wherever you are, right now, you can start, right now; this very moment.
β
β
Israelmore Ayivor
β
You can run and run as fast and as far as you like, but the truth is, wherever you run, there you are.
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (Where Rainbows End)
β
Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it- memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.
β
β
Tad Williams
β
It's funny because when you're a child, you believe you can be anything you want to be, go wherever you want to go. There's no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less.
Or perhaps a variation of what you once wanted.
Why do we stop believing in ourselves? Why do we let facts and figures and anything but dreams rule our lives?
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
β
Farewell," they cried, "Wherever you fare till your eyries receive you at the journey's end!" That is the polite thing to say among eagles.
"May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks," answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, or, There and back again)
β
Being honest doesn't mean you say whatever you want, wherever you want. It means that what you choose to say is true.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
β
I was tired, it was late, I was sitting half-asleep in the back of a taxi, remembering strangely that wherever I go, you are with me, and so is he, and that as long as you both live the world will be beautiful to me.
β
β
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
β
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.
β
β
William James
β
I go wherever you go,' he says, launching us into the water.
This is our start. This is the moment it becomes real. We are married. We are infinite. Me and Conrad. The first boy I ever slow danced with, ever cried over. Ever loved.
β
β
Jenny Han (We'll Always Have Summer (Summer #3))
β
When you need to be loved, you take love wherever you can find it. When you are desperate to be loved, feel love, know love, you seek out what you think love should look like. When you find love, or what you think love is, you will lie, kill, and steal to keep it. But learning about real love comes from within. It cannot be given. It cannot be taken away. It grows from your ability to re-create within yourself, the essence of loving experiences you have had in your life.
β
β
Iyanla Vanzant
β
Even in the far future,
never forget the you of right now
Wherever you are right now,
youβre just taking a break
β
β
BTS
β
Comfort me from wherever you areβalone, we are quickly worn out; if I place my head on the road, let it seem softened by you. Could it be that even from afar we offer each other a gentle breath?
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke
β
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
β
β
Thomas Henry Huxley (Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley β Volume 1)
β
I have so much love for you, I could fill rooms with it. Buildings. Youβre surrounded by it wherever you go, you walk through it, breathe it...itβs in your lungs, and under your tongue, and between your fingers and toes...β His mouth moved passionately over hers, urging her lips apart. It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis. Or at least that was how Poppy felt about it.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Tempt Me at Twilight (The Hathaways, #3))
β
But wherever youβre headed when this life is over, Quinlan, thatβs where I want to be, too.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2))
β
If I fought for them and was crippled, they would all say nice things,and then they would replace me and forget I was ever there. You would stay with me. You would take care of me, because you love me. I love you too, Kate. If you ever became hurt, I would not leave you.
Iβll be there. Wherever you wantβthereβ to be.
-Curran to Kate
β
β
Ilona Andrews (Magic Slays (Kate Daniels, #5))
β
Something wonderful begins to happen with the simple realization that life, like an automobile, is driven from the inside out, not the other way around. As you focus more on becoming more peaceful with where you are, rather than focusing on where you would rather be, you begin to find peace right now, in the present. Then, as you move around, try new things, and meet new people, you carry that sense of inner peace with you. It's absolutely true that, "Wherever you go, there you are.
β
β
Richard Carlson (Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and It's All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things From Taking Over Your Life)
β
It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches β and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban. Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. Itβs still going on.
β
β
Philip Pullman
β
Wherever I go, I will speak of you with love.
β
β
Clive Barker (The Thief of Always)
β
Words exist only in theory. And then one ordinary day you run into a word that exists only in theory. And you meet it face to face. And then that word becomes someone you know. That word becomes someone you hate. And you take that word with you wherever you go. And you can't pretend it isn't there.
β
β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (The Inexplicable Logic of My Life)
β
Wherever it is you may be, it is your friends who make your world.
β
β
Chris Bradford (The Way of the Sword (Young Samurai, #2))
β
He caught me to him, his arms banded tight around me. His face pressed into my throat. "Where do we go from here?"
I held him. "Wherever this takes us. Together.
β
β
Sylvia Day (Reflected in You (Crossfire, #2))
β
I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didnβt mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But thereβs no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lay your head.
I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn't plan for it to turn out this way Iβd be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldnβt even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.
Every night I used to pray that Iβd find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.
β
β
Lana Del Rey
β
Just that dwelling and planning is bullshit, you dwell on the past, you canβt move forward. Spend too much time planning for the future and you just push yourself backwards, or you stay stagnant in the same place all your life. Live in the moment, where everything is just right, take your time and limit your bad memories and youβll get wherever it is youβre going a lot faster and with less bumps in the road along the way.
β
β
J.A. Redmerski (The Edge of Never (The Edge of Never, #1))
β
Perhaps the most "spiritual" thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.
β
β
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life)
β
Live in the moment, where everything is just right, take your time and limit your bad memories and you'll get wherever it is you're going a lot faster and with less bumps in the way.
β
β
J.A. Redmerski (The Edge of Never (The Edge of Never, #1))
β
There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.
β
β
Marya Hornbacher (Wasted : A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia)
β
Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. βNo man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.β
βBut what if he is your friend?β Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. βOr your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?β
βYou ask a question that philosophers argue over,β Chiron had said. βHe is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone elseβs friend and brother. So which life is more important?β
We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.
He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.
I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.
β
β
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
β
Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.
β
β
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are)
β
Hey, have you ever heard of the Alchemists? "
"Sure, " he said.
"Of course you have. "
"Why? Did you run into them? "
"Kind of. "
"What'd you do? "
"Why do you think I did anything? "
He laughed. "Alchemists only show up when trouble happens, and you bring trouble wherever you go. Be careful, though. They're religious nuts."
"That's kind of extreme," I said.
"Just don't let them convert you." He winked. "I like you being the sinner you are.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Blood Promise (Vampire Academy, #4))
β
Nudge threw her arms around my neck. 'I love you Max! I love all of us too!'
Yeah, me too,' Said the Gasman. 'I don't care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together.
β
β
James Patterson
β
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are things you get ashamed of, because words make them smaller. When they were in your head they were limitless; but when they come out they seem to be no bigger than normal things. But that's not all. The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried; they are clues that could guide your enemies to a prize they would love to steal. It's hard and painful for you to talk about these things ... and then people just look at you strangely. They haven't understood what you've said at all, or why you almost cried while you were saying it.
β
β
Stephen King (The Body)
β
You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.
β
β
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life)
β
Here, start living moment to moment totally and intensely, joyfully and playfully β and you will see that nothing goes out of control; that your intelligence becomes sharper; that you become younger; that your love becomes deeper. And when you go out into the world, wherever you go, spread life, playfulness, joy, as far away as possible β to every nook and corner of the earth.
β
β
Osho
β
It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?
β
β
Bernhard Schlink (The Reader)
β
Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, alive or dead, young or old, my heart will always be with yours. Every beat you feel against your fingertips..." His fingers tapped against my chest, once, twice. "... is me calling out to you. It's you returning the call. It's us talking, communicating, bonding, sharing, Living -- Kiersten, it's us living.
β
β
Rachel Van Dyken (Ruin (Ruin, #1))
β
I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, Iβll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. Iβd do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.
β
β
Cynthia Hand (Boundless (Unearthly, #3))
β
His hand was on my throat, and he was crushing me back with his body into the cold steel beam behind me. "Yes, I have loved, Ms. Lane, and although itβs none of your business, I have lost. Many things. And no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like Vβlane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally." He leaned fully against me and I gasped.
"Sometimes itβs over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And yes, I trashed the bookstore when I couldnβt find you. Youβll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And Iβm sorry your pretty little world got all screwed up, but everybodyβs does, and you go on. Itβs how you go on that defines you." His hand relaxed on my throat. "And I am going to tattoo you, Ms. Lane, however and wherever I please.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Bloodfever (Fever, #2))
β
Most people write me off when they see me.
They do not know my story.
They say I am just an African.
They judge me before they get to know me.
What they do not know is
The pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins;
The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people;
The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community;
The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance;
The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it.
Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning.
So you think I am nothing?
Donβt worry about what I am now,
For what I will be, I am gradually becoming.
I will raise my head high wherever I go
Because of my African pride,
And nobody will take that away from me.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams)
β
Wherever I go, I'll always see you. You'll always be with me. And there's no happy ending coming here, no way a story that started on a night that's burned into my heart will end the way I wish it could. You're really gone, no last words, and no matter how many letters I write to you, you're never going to reply. You're never going to say good-bye. So I will. Good-bye, Julia. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being you.
β
β
Elizabeth Scott (Love You Hate You Miss You)
β
We've got a sort of brainwashing going on in our country, Morrie sighed. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it--and have it repeated to us--over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all of this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.
Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it. 'Guess what I got? Guess what I got?'
You know how I interpreted that? These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.
Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have.
β
β
Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson)
β
A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.
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Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
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I'll think about you every day. Part of me is scared that there will come a time when you don't feel the same way,that you'll somehow forget what we shared, so this is what I want to do. Wherever you are and no matter what's going on in your life, when it's the first night of the full moon-like it was the first time we met-I want you to find it in the nighttime sky. I want you to think about me and the week we shared, because wherever I am and no matter what's going on in my life, that's exactly what I'll be doing. If we can't be together, at least we can share that, and maybe between the two of us, we can make it last forever.
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Nicholas Sparks
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Prayer for Love
Thank You, Creator of the Universe for the gift of Life you have given me,
Thank You for giving me everything that I have ever needed,
Thank You for the opportunity to experience this beautiful body and this wonderful mind,
Thank You for living inside me with all Your Love and Your pure and boundless Spirit,
with Your warm and radiating Light.
Thank You for using my words, for using my eyes, for using my heart to share your love wherever I go.
I love You just the way you are and because I am your creation, I love myself just the way I am.
Help me to keep the Love and the Peace in my Heart and to make that Love a new way of life, that I may live in Love the rest of my life.
Amen.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.
If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."
"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.
There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.
But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world?
The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is unmothered.
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Clarissa Pinkola EstΓ©s (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
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Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my womanβs breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on natureβs mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!
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William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
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Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or any of it, really but I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that knowing what I've lost...
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Joss Whedon
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Where in the bloody hell did that come from?" asks the other person behind the counter. Or more precisely, on top of the counter, where her ridiculously attractive, English-accented boyfriend is perched.
He's the other thing I like about Anna. Wherever she goes, he follows.
He nods toward the baby wipe. "What else are you carrying in your pockets? Dust rags? Furniture polish?"
"Watch it," she says. "Or I'll scrub your arms, Γtienne."
He grins. "As long as you do it in private.
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Stephanie Perkins (Lola and the Boy Next Door (Anna and the French Kiss, #2))
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Beneatha: Love him? There is nothing left to love.
Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (Looking at her) Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
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Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun)
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I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with vision of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three year down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not very popular one, who once has dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didnβt mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But thereβs no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lied you head.
I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiviness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didnβt plan for it to turn out this way Iβd be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obssesion for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldnβt even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.
Every night I used to pray that Iβd find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.
LIVE FAST. DIE YOUNG. BE WILD. AND HAVE FUN.
I believe in the country America used to be. I belive in the person I want to become, I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever- *I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when Iβm at war with myself- I Ride. I Just Ride.*
Who are you? Are you in touch with all your darkest fantasies?
Have you created a life for yourself where youβre free to experience them?
I Have.
I Am Fucking Crazy. But I Am Free.
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Lana Del Rey
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The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
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Stephen King (Different Seasons)
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Take a shower. Wash away every trace of yesterday. Of smells. Of weary skin. Get dressed. Make coffee, windows open, the sun shining through. Hold the cup with two hands and notice that you feel the feeling of warmth.Β β¨ You still feel warmth.β¨Now sit down and get to work. Keep your mind sharp, head on, eyes on the page and if small thoughts of worries fight their ways into your consciousness: threw them off like fires in the night and keep your eyes on the track. Nothing but the task in front of you.Β
Get off your chair in the middle of the day. Put on your shoes and take a long walk on open streets around people. Notice how theyβre all walking, in a hurry, or slowly. Smiling, laughing, or eyes straight forward, hurried to get to wherever theyβre going. And notice how youβre just one of them. Not more, not less. Find comfort in the way youβre just one in the crowd. Your worries: no more, no less.
Go back home. Take the long way just to not pass the liquor store. Donβt buy the cigarettes. Go straight home. Take off your shoes. Wash your hands. Your face. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Itβs still beating. Still fighting. Now get back to work.β¨Work with your mind sharp and eyes focused and if any thoughts of worries or hate or sadness creep their ways around, shake them off like a runner in the night for you own your mind, and you need to tame it. Focus. Keep it sharp on track, nothing but the task in front of you.
Work until your eyes are tired and head is heavy, and keep working even after that.
Then take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes.β¨Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more.Β β¨Youβre doing just fine.β¨Youβre doing fine.
Iβm doing just fine.
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Charlotte Eriksson (You're Doing Just Fine)
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Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worshipβjust so long as those prayers are sincere.
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite."
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?
That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
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I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a colour?
Colour is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness. Because Iβve listened to souls whispering β like the susurrus of the wind β from book to book and object to object for tens or thousands of years, allow me to say that my touch resembles the touch of angels. Part of me, the serious half, calls out to your vision while the mirthful half sours through the air with your glances.
Iβm so fortunate to be red! Iβm fiery. Iβm strong. I know men take notice of me and that I cannot be resisted.
I do not conceal myself: For me, delicacy manifests itself neither in weakness nor in subtlety, but through determination and will. So, I draw attention to myself. Iβm not afraid of other colours, shadows, crowds or even of loneliness. How wonderful it is to cover a surface that awaits me with my own victorious being! Wherever Iβm spread, I see eyes shine, passions increase, eyebrows rise and heartbeats quicken. Behold how wonderful it is to live! Behold how wonderful to see. I am everywhere. Life begins with and returns to me. Have faith in what I tell you.
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Orhan Pamuk (My Name Is Red)
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People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply youβre not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. Itβs yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially donβt owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, donβt even start asking for theirs.
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Banksy
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I do like him. I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect....
.... Listen, don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else." Franny made her voice stop. It sounded to her caviling and bitchy, and she felt a wave of self-hatred that, quite literally, made her forehead begin to perspire again. But her voice picked up again, in spite of herself. "I don't mean there's anything horrible about him or anything like that. It's just that for four solid years I've kept seeing Wally Campbells wherever I go. I know when they're going to be charming, I know when they're going to start telling you some really nasty gossip about some girl that lives in your dorm, I know when they're going to ask me what I did over the summer, I know when they're going to pull up a chair and straddle it backward and start bragging in a terribly, terribly quiet voice--or name-dropping in a terribly quiet, casual voice. There's an unwritten law that people in a certain social or financial bracket can name-drop as much as they like just as long as they say something terribly disparaging about the person as soon as they've dropped his nameβthat he's a bastard or a nymphomaniac or takes dope all the time, or something horrible." She broke off again. She was quiet for a moment, turning the ashtray in her fingers.
Franny quickly tipped her cigarette ash, then brought the ashtray an inch closer to her side of the table. "I'm sorry. I'm awful," she said. "I've just felt so destructive all week. It's awful, I'm horrible.
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J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
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Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world, with his chin in his hand, called out "Pooh!" "Yes?" said Pooh. "When I'm--when--Pooh!" "Yes, Christopher Robin?" "I'm not going to do Nothing any more." "Never again?" "Well, not so much. They don't let you." Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again. "Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully. "Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?" "Just me?" "Yes, Pooh." "Will you be here too?" "Yes Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be Pooh." "That's good," said Pooh. "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." Pooh thought for a little. "How old shall I be then?" "Ninety-nine." Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said. Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm not quite--" he stopped and tried again-- "Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?" "Understand what?" "Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!" "Where?" said Pooh. "Anywhere." said Christopher Robin.
So, they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.
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A.A. Milne (The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh, #2))