Step 41: Some Quotes

Here are some great quotes I recently collected from one of the books I've been reading that frequently quotes others:

*I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever. (Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go)


*What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Oh, what then? (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

*Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum; only that you can elect what you want to take at any given time. (A Course in Miracles)

*The important thing is this: To be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become. (Charles Dubois)

*Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular. (Carl Jung)

*When one is willing and eager, the gods join in. (Aeschylus)

*The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest of wilderness. (John Muir)

*You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

*The organs weep the tears the eyes refuse to shed. Unexpressed emotion is stored in the muscles of the body. (Wilhelm Reich)

*A great teacher never strives to explain her vision; she simply invites you to stand beside her and see for yourself. (The Rev. R. Inman)

*Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. (Jack London)

*Forget about likes and dislikes; they are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. (George Bernard Shaw)

*God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. (James Barrie)

*I slept, and I dreamt that life was all joy. I woke, and saw that life was but service. I served, and discovered that service was joy. (Rabindranath Tagore)

*If I am not for myself, Who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, What am I? (Hillel)

*Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. (Andrew Jackson)

*Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. (David Lloyd George)

*True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. (Nikos Kazantzakis)

*I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me water; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; naked and you clothed me; ill and you comforted me. (from the book of Matthew)

*I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible. (George Bernard Shaw)

*Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.

*We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, to find that enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song. But in that dance, and in that song, the most ancient rites of our conscience fulfill themselves in the awareness of being human. (Pablo Neruda, Toward the Splendid City)

*There are no maps; no more creeds or philosophies. From here on in, the directions come straight from the Universe. (Akshara Noor)

*I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. (Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried.)

*Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on man. (Francis Cardinal Spellmen)

*Whoever would be the greatest among you is the servant of all. (Jesus)