“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
– Rumi.
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Category: Quotes
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Live a life – Khalil Gibran
“Do not love half lovers
Do not entertain half friends
Do not indulge in works of the half talented
Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
Do not silence yourself to say something
And do not speak to be silent
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half a drink will not quench your thirst
Half a meal will not satiate your hunger
Half the way will get you no where
Half an idea will bear you no results
Your other half is not the one you love
It is you in another time yet in the same space
It is you when you are not
Half a life is a life you didn’t live,
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you
and they strangers to you
The half is a mere moment of inability
but you are able for you are not half a being
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life.”
– Khalil Gibran
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Maturity – David Whyte
“Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once. The wisdom that comes from maturity is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human identity: what has happened, what is happening now and what is about to occur.
Immaturity is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, or even, living only two out of the three.
Maturity is not a static arrived platform, where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but a living elemental frontier between what has happened, what is happening now and the consequences of that past and present; first imagined and then lived into the waiting future.
Maturity calls us to risk ourselves as much as immaturity, but for a bigger picture, a larger horizon; for a powerfully generous outward incarnation of our inward qualities and not for gains that make us smaller, even in the winning.”
– David Whyte
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The wounded child inside – Bell Hooks
“The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”
– Bell Hooks
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Companion – Albert Camus
“The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with those who free you, who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel.
Today’s life is too hard, too bitter, too anemic, for us to undergo new bondages, from whom we love. This is how I am your friend, I love your happiness, your freedom, Your adventure in one word, and I would like to be for you the companion we are sure of, always.”
– Albert Camus
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Believe ― Robin Williams
“Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first.”
― Robin Williams
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Lightly – Aldous Huxley
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”
– Aldous Huxley
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Home – Naguib Mahfouz
“Home is not where you were born; it’s where all your attempts to escape cease.”
– Naguib Mahfouz
“After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure… that you really are strong, and you really do have worth.
And you learn and you learn… with every goodbye you learn.”
– Veronica Shoffstall
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The best people – Ernest Hemingway
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
– Ernest Hemingway
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Loneliness ― Carl Gustav Jung
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
― Carl Gustav Jung
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Change – Paulo Coelho
“Change. But start slowly, because direction is more important than speed.”
– Paulo Coelho
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Counsel – Baltasar Gracián
“When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.”
– Baltasar Gracián
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Real problem of humanity – E.O. Wilson
“The real problem of humanity is we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technologies.”
— E.O. Wilson
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Inner journey – Anaïs Nin
“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a centre. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”
– Anaïs Nin