Quotes about being
page 7

“The greatest gift you can offer anyone
is their complete freedom.
Freedom to love, to laugh, to cry,
to feel scared, angry, insecure,
full of doubt or full of joy.
To hold them in a safe and sacred space.

You don't exist to make anyone else happy.
But you can be present.
Present to their unhappiness, their excitement.
Present to the life that moves in them.

And you can invite them into a deeper Happiness.
The Happiness of Being itself.
The Happiness that holds them
exactly as they are.

The way you hold them now.

The way the ground holds the flowers, the trees, the great mountain ranges.

The way you were held as a little one.

And before the stars were born.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxctntcHCUR/

“Why settle for what is provided instead of being motivated to achieve what you want. Complacency is your contentment.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1987

Motivation

“Then, there is the secret life.
There, alone and in our own realm;
Here, we fantasize about sex, romance,
and being wealthy. No one knows.
Except, when we cross over
and violate societal mores. We betray,
experience relationships that would be scorned
in the other two lives. And to the extent we deviate
from the norms, the greater amount of time
is expended for clandestine pursuits.
And we stay here, because it’s addictive.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2003
From the poem, "The Addictive Life.”

Life, Secret, Sex, Time

“We have spent these last years disciplining anyone who disagrees with our line on divorce, on birth control, on being gay. While our planet was being destroyed, while inequality grew like a cancer. We worried whether it was alright to speak the Mass in Latin, whether girls should be allowed to be altar servers. We built walls around us, and all…”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Source: Movie The Two Popes, Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis

Girl, Birth

“My formula for greatness in a human being is … that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.
Not merely bear what is necessary, …but love it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

Source: Ecce Homo, chapter Why I Am So Clever

“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…

Business

“If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Idea

“Our dedication to good actions as human beings is what most nourishes our souls”

Angelo Vulpini (2003) Venezuelan recording artist

Source: Posted on @angelovulpini, Instagram (June 15, 2019)

Soul

“Life is being ready for trials and being able to overcome them.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life

“Being alive is about messing up gloriously, and I will fight for that ability to gloriously mess up because I don't believe that humans are statues or sculptures.”

Alok Vaid-Menon (1991) American performance artist, and LGBTQ rights activist

Fight

“You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”

Epicurus (-341–-269 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Happiness, Courage, Time, Courageous

“The church is unlike school. Simply, because you can't ask questions while the service is being delivered.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

School, Question

“Being an author is not as easy as it sounds. In short, an author can create thousands of actors. Also an actor can produce several musicians.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Children are only terrified of invisible ghosts. But some human beings are just as terrible as these creatures.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Children

“Sometimes, you just can't help yourself but to learn quickly when being taught by the opposite gender.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning, Help

“The act of divorce shows the immaturity of the human being in love. We think and imagine that we know so much about love, but we don't know anything at all.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Imagination, Thinking

“Who are the best sinners between corporeal and spiritual beings?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“[...] above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between “antisemitism” and “disliking Jews.””

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: Antisemitism in Britain (1945)

People, Drawing

“Having lived in an oriental country I have developed a certain indifference to miracles, and I well know that having delusions, or even being an outright lunatic, is quite compatible with what is loosely called genius.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: "As I Please," Tribune (3 March 1944)
http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/

Country, Indifference

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1993 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. As quoted in: Olivia Waxman (August 2, 2018): Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade. In: Time Magazine. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527151841/https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ from [hhttps://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ the original] on May 27, 2022. As quoted in: Louise Melling (Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, ACLU) (September 23, 2020): For Justice Ginsburg, Abortion Was About Equality. In: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527144342/https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality from the original https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality on May 27, 2022. <br class="br">1990s

Life, Decision

“If you are not truthful and if you are not in reality about yourself and if you are not in reality about the truth of other people, you have no chance at being happy in any of your relationships.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Happiness, People, Truth, Reality

“The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light. In that hour was made a Darkness that seemed not lack but a thing with being of its own: for it was indeed made by malice out of Light, and it had power to pierce the eye, and to enter heart and mind, and strangle the very will.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book The Silmarillion

Source: J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Light, Loss, Heart

“I think I did have a reputation for being grumpy. I don't think I'm grumpy. I have opinions. I have an independent vision. I am a purposeful person. But on a daily basis, I think I'm other than grumpy. I think it is a case where I am coming to do business and not there just to be flattered and cajoled and used.”

Harrison Ford (1942) American film actor and producer

Business, Thinking, Personality

“You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

Idea

“No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Source: Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

Thinking

“Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Girl, Boy

“I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Variant: I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.

Girl, Night

“A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it.”

Fred Allen (1894–1956) comedian

“It is the universal nature of human Bildung to constitute itself as a universal intellectual being. Whoever abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet ("unformed")—e. g., if someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion. Hegel shows that basically such a man is lacking in the power of abstraction. He cannot turn his gaze from himself towards something universal, from which his own particular being is determined in measure and proportion.”

Hans-Georg Gadamer book Truth and Method

Source: Truth and Method

Way, Nature, Sense, Universe

“Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: The Burning Secret and other stories

Children, Sleep, Childhood

“But if you can't tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Variant: If you can't tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself.
Source: City of Ashes

People, Truth

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

World, Feeling, Thinking, Suffering

“Being human means having doubts and yet still continuing on your path.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce (1926–2016) American writer

Variant: To live a creative life we must first lose the fear of being wrong.

Life, Fear, Motivational, Success

“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Youth

“Assassins did have a certain code, after all. It was dishonorable to kill someone if you weren't being paid.”

Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms

Source: Men at Arms

“I've learned…. That being kind is more important than being right.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: Live and Learn and Pass It On, Volume II: People Ages 5 to 95 Share What They've Discovered About Life, Love, and Other Good Stuff

Learning

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. … I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"What Can I Tell You about Myself which You Have Not Already Found Out from Those Who Do Not Lie?" in The Beatles Anthology (2000)

People, Thinking

“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, Women, Girl, Thinking

“To act—that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Wisdom, Success

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Future

“The life of every human being on earth can depend on the experience, judgment, and vigilance of the person in the Oval Office.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Life, Dependency, Personality

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution

Happiness, Nature, Joy, Perfection

“The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

“It’s never simple.” Avery slid an arm around Hope’s waist. “It shouldn’t be. Because being with someone should matter enough to be at least a little bit complicated.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Perfect Hope

Hope

“Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Learning

“‎Mark it down: God loves you with an unearthly love. You can't win it by being winsome. You can't lose it by being a loser. But you can be blind enough to resist it”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Love, God

“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

Cats, Dead, Box

“When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

Source: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

Wisdom, Soul

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
Source: The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

Life, Water

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.

“Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Love, People, Indifference

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: 1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

People, Truth

“The only way love can last a lifetime is if it's unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.”

Stephen Kendrick book The Love Dare

Source: The Love Dare

Love, Truth, Way

“They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

“One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings
Context: After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

War, Feeling, Soul

“Passion is the love of turning being into action. It fuels the engine of creation. It changes concepts to experience…. Never deny passion, for that is to deny Who You Are, and Who You Truly Want To Be.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Love, Passion, Change

“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”

Saul Bellow book Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories

"Him with His Foot in His Mouth," from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
General sources

“The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Thinking, Heart

“When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Hate, Truth, Question

“A born king is a very rare being.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

“The best remedy for what ails me is being with you here under the sun.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Sun

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'
Quite often men are fools.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of Light

Men, Fools

“For we did makeup. But we didn't forgive each other. And we didn't take steps. And it got to be too late and we saw that each of us had invested too much in being in the right and we walked away and it was a relief.”

Alice Munro book The Love of a Good Woman

Source: The Love of a Good Woman

Forgiveness

“Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls… Even when they're being kind… especially when they're being kind.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

People, Soul

“Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“that as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Variant: So long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Love has nothing to do with someone else. It is all about you. It is a way of being. It essentially means you have brought sweetness into your emotion. If a loved one travels to another country, would you still be able to love them? You would. If a loved one passed away, would you still be able to love them? You would. Even if a loved one is not physically with you anymore, you are still capable of being loving. So, what is love then? It is just your own quality. You are only using the other person as a key to open up what is already within you.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love, Way, Travel, Personality

“All I care to know about a man is that he is a human being… he can't be any worse.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window—or break down a door.”

Brooke Shields (1965) US actress

Happiness, Inspirational

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Nature

“Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Sense

“You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 8
Context: A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."

Truth, Understanding

“What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water!”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Variant: It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water.
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Water

“I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Girl, Time

“We don’t do what we do for the glory or the fame or the credit; we do it for the quiet satisfaction of making the world a better place, saving the lives of innocents, and being better than you are.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Dark Days

World

“Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Truth

“If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Intelligence

“Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Men, Time

“But memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Beauty, Memory, Time

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women, Men, Children, World

“Seeming and being are not one and the same.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Depressing

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”

Bertrand Russell book A History of Western Philosophy

Source: A History of Western Philosophy

Age, Study

“We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

A Declaration of Independence (12 March 1964) http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1148 <br class="br">Variant: We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. <br class="br">Context: There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity. There can be no workers' solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. One can't unite bananas with scattered leaves.

Thinking