1. “A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.”
2. “All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or dispair. Snapshots don't show the million decisions that led to that moment.”
3. “A name is a label, and as soon as there is a label, the ideas disappear and out comes label-worship and label-bashing, and instead of living by a theme of ideas, people begin dying for labels... and the last thing the world needs is another religion.”
4. ”An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.”
5. “Anyone desperate enough for suicide...should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try.”
6. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.”
7. "As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see."
8. “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 trust 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.”
9. “Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. 'Nothing' is the worst thing that can happen to us!”
10. “Can miles truly separate us from friends? If we want to be with someone we love, aren't we already there?”
11. ”Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.”
12. “Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”
13. “Don't tell me that my security comes from somebody else! Tell me I'm responsible. Tell me security is a by-product of the gift I give of my skill and my learning and my love in the world. Tell me security comes from an idea given time and care. I claim this for my truth...give me ideas, and let me take it from there!”
14. "Do you ever notice, after you've known someone for a while, how their appearance changes? He can be the handsomest man in the world," she [Leslie] said, "but he turns plain as popcorn when he has nothing to say. And the plainest man says what matters to him and why he cares and in two minutes he's so beautiful you want to hug him!"
15. "Do you know what I learned from you? I learned what is possible, and now I must hold out for what I thought we had. I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me. That or nothing. I realized that what I'm looking for is not what you're looking for. You don't want what I want." "What do you think I want?" I asked. "Exactly what you have. Many women you know a little and don't care very much about. Superficial flirtations, mutual use, no chance of love. That's my idea of hell. Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, Richard, in which there is no love. Horrible! Leave me out of it."
16. “Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting is a swim in reality.”
17. “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.”
18. “Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.”
19. “Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.”
20. “For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.”
21. “Get this in mind early: We never grow up.”
22. “Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.”
23. “How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently? How can you think everyone can be a hero, choosing death, when it is part of our nature to let go of brave thoughts at the last moment and cling to hope and life?”
24. “How do you know that's not the only way some lessons can get through to you? If you didn't need to fight in order to learn, you wouldn't create so many problems! There are times I don't understand till you're angry...aren't there times you don't know what I mean until I scream?”
25. “Humanity is not a gift of nature, it is a spiritual achievement to be earned.”
26. “If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.”
27. “If you want freedom and joy so much, can't you see it's not anywhere outside of you? Say you have it and you have it! Act as if it's yours, and it is! Richard what is so damned hard about that? But they didn't even hear, most of them. Miracles - like going to auto races to see the crashes, they came to me to see miracles. First it's frustrating and then after a while it just gets dull. I have no idea how the other messiahs could stand it. “
28. “If you want security...you've come to the wrong arena. The only security is Life Is, and that's all that matters. Absolute, unchanging, perfect. but Security in Appearances? Even the sycamore falls to dust, someday...The wood disintegrates, the symbol vanishes, not the spirit of its life. The belief of your body shatters, not the believer who shaped it.”
29. “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.”
30. “I gave my life to become what I am now. Was it worth it?”
31. “I handle the sky that's around me at the moment, in the best way I know how. I'm not responsible for surviving all the weather everywhere, I'm just responsible for getting through the weather I find in a block from one wingtip to the other and from the bottom of the wheels to the top of the rudders. I'm responsible because that's the weather I draw by choosing my time to fly and deciding where I point Daisy's nose.”
32. “Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: the Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. Your friends will know you better in the first minute that you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.”
33. “I'm not afraid to cry when something that might have been beautiful dies.”
34. “I’m not here because I’m supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anyone in the world.”
35. "In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice."
36. "Learning is finding out what you already know, Doing is demonstrating that you know it, Teaching is reminding others that they know it as well as you do. We are all learners, doers, and teachers."
37. “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.”
38. “Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world - even if what is published is not true.”
39. "Listen to what you know instead of what you fear."
40. “Look in a mirror and one thing's sure; what we see is not who we are.”
41. “No one had I met but you with whom I dared be as childish as sometimes I felt, as silly, as knowing, as close and touching. If love wasn't a word twisted and mutilated by possession and hypocrisy, if it was a word that meant what I wanted it to mean, I might be on the edge of believing I was in love with you.”
42. “Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.”
43. “Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.”
44. “One of a charmed pair must always supply what the other might lack.”
45. “Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”
46. “Real loves stories never have endings.”
47. “Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.”
48. "Sometimes when learning comes before experience It doesn't make sense right away."
49. “Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.”
50. “Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. The same questions, asked again, being you just the answers you need just the minute you need them.”
51. “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.”
52. “The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”
53. “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.”
54. “The idea that we are physical beings descended from primeval cells in nutrient soups, that idea does violence to my intuition, stomps all over it with football-shoes. The idea that we are descended from a jealous God who formed us out of dust to choose between kneel--praying or fires-of- damnation, that stomps me worse.”
55. “The impacts...are our tests for each other. You can decide to be happy yourself no matter what I do, and chances are that when you're happy I'll be glad, because I like being with you when you're happy. But it's me making me happy, not you.”
56. “The man who flies an airplane ... must believe in the unseen.
To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.
Flyers have a sense of adventures yet to come, instead of dimly recalling adventures of long ago as the only moments in which they truly lived.
For pilots sometimes see behind the curtain, behind the veil of gossamer velvet, and find the truth behind man, the force behind a universe
Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight -- how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment you touch the perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, of flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfect speed, my son, is being there.”
57. “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.”
58. “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”
59. “The next part of the lesson was a reminder that we are teachers, one of us to another. We bring each other into our lives, soulmates and instructors carefully chosen to hand us the lessons we need. When we graduate, though, no matter our gratitude to the person who taught us, it is the lesson and not the teacher we bring to our next class.”
60. ”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.”
61. “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.”
62. ”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.”
63. “The simplest things are often the truest.”
64. “The world's crazy, when it comes to beauty.”
65. “The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.”
66. “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.”
67. "...there is such a thing as perfection...and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth....Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside."
68. “The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.”
69. “The simplest things are often the truest.”
70. ”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 do not have love we will be unhappy.”
71. “This is how you love me? Lock me away? Keep me from being a part of your life? I lived the hard times for you, I deserve to know what you know, and I don't! You locked me up! Not even windows, you locked me up! Do you know what that feels like? It feels like a diamond in a safe! It feels like a butterfly in chains! It feels life-less! Do you know life-less? Do you know cold? Do you know dark? Do you know someone who ought to love you more than anyone in the world and they don't care whether you live or die?”
72. “To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.”
73. “Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else's list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.”
74. “We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us?”
75. “We're different, we're the same. You thought you'd never find a word to say to a woman who didn't fly airplanes. I couldn't imagine myself spending time with a man who didn't love music. Could it be it's not as important to be alike as it is to be curious? Because we're different, we can have the fun of exchanging worlds, giving our loves and excitements to each other. You can learn music, I can learn flying. And that's only the beginning. I think it would go on for us as long as we live.”
76. “We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks.”
77. "When we come to the last moment of this lifetime, and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is "What was the quality of our love?"
78. “With all the books we have, so many still waiting to be written! Like fresh deep plums way up in the treetops. Not much fun to climb up some teetery ladder, snake through the branches going way out on limbs to pick 'em, but how delicious they are when the work is over.”
79. “You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”
80. “You are creatures of light, we read. From light have you come, to light shall you go, and surrounding you through every step is the light of your infinite being.”
81. “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.”
82. “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.”
83. “You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.”
84. “You teach best what you most need to learn. “
85. “Your armor, it shields you from any woman who would destroy you, sure enough. but unless you let it go, it will shield you as well from the only one who can love you, nourish you, save you from your own protection. There is one perfect woman for you. She is singular, not plural.”
86. "Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself."
