Richard Bach Quotes (154 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Nothing by Chance

Richard Bach

Richard Bach: 154 quotes52 likes

Famous Richard Bach Quotes

“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.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“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.”

Richard Bach

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“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.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“The only obligation we have in any lifetime is to be true to ourselves.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Variant: Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Context: Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.
Context: Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

“Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.”

Richard Bach

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Variant: if you argue for your limitations they are yours
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Richard Bach Quotes about love

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

Richard Bach

“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)

“If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.”

Richard Bach

“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.”

Richard Bach

“True love stories never have endings.”

Richard Bach

“What I have just heard is pure... listen!... radiance, that you took from cloud-linings and sunrises and distilled into light that I can hear! Do you know how good, how lovely that is, what you can make the piano do?”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

Source: The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 21

Richard Bach Quotes about learning

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Context: 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.

“Learning is finding out what you already know.”

Richard Bach

“You teach best what you most need to learn.”

Richard Bach

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Variant: You teach best what you most need to learn.
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“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.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

Richard Bach: Trending quotes

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you can make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost….”

Richard Bach

“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!”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Richard Bach Quotes

“Nothing happens by chance, my friend… No such thing as luck.”

Richard Bach book Nothing by Chance

Nothing by Chance: A Gypsy Pilot's Adventures in Modern America (1969)
Context: 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, we may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.

“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.”

Richard Bach

Source: One

“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.”

Richard Bach

“I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?”

Richard Bach

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

Richard Bach

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

Richard Bach

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Perspective— Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

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

Richard Bach

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

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

Richard Bach book Illusions

Source: Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

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

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)
Context: 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?

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“One challenge of our adventure on earth is to rise above dead systems… wars, nations, destructions… to refuse to be a part of them, and express the highest selves we know how to be.”

Richard Bach

Source: One

“What matters is how I use what I know, every minute of every day; how I use it to remember, in the midst of the game.”

Richard Bach

Source: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit

“But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

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

Richard Bach

Variant: You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“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.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“"There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from."…
"You're quoting Snoopy the dog, I believe?"
"I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you."”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

“The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

Source: The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 48
Context: The things we own, the places we live, the events of our lives: empty settings. How easy to chase after settings, and forget diamonds! The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?

“You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die.”

Richard Bach

There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)
Context: You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.

“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.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

“Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Context: 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 lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy.

“An old maxim says that a professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit”

Richard Bach

A Gift of Wings (1974)
Source: https://books.google.de/books?id=InUpHgnif58C&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=An+old+maxim+says+that+a+professional+writer+is+an+amateur+who+didn%27t+quit&source=bl&ots=RpDceaKvsx&sig=ACfU3U0n2qLBUs3E_5CDTfLDvLPmk3tB7A&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB16L5_5jyAhWlgf0HHeQyD2oQ6AF6BAgREAM#v=onepage&q=An%20old%20maxim%20says%20that%20a%20professional%20writer%20is%20an%20amateur%20who%20didn't%20quit&f=false A Gift of Wings

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

Richard Bach

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“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.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Variant: All the people, all the events in your life are put there for a reason. What you choose to do with them is up to you

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

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

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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

Richard Bach

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“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.”

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“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.”

Richard Bach

Source: The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 15
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“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!”

Richard Bach

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

Richard Bach

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

“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.”

Richard Bach

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

Richard Bach

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Variant: This is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete, if you are alive, it isn't.
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

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

Richard Bach

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

Richard Bach

Source: One

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

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.”

Richard Bach

Source: One

“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, and teachers.”