Quotes about being

page 9

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.”

“When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”

“Alltami (n.)

The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.”

“Being free always involves being lonely.”

“Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”

“I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't one's lover.”

“In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.”

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”

“Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.”

“Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.”

“Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.”

“Where you are born should not dictate your potential as a human being.”

“I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”

“I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.”

“Being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done—that's courage. The one who feels no fear is a fool, and the one who lets fear rule him is a coward.”

“Being responsible is taking ownership of your life. It means you have taken the first radical step to becoming a complete human being—fully conscious and fully human. In taking responsibility and beginning the journey toward conscious living, you are putting an end to the age-old patterns of assigning blame outward or heavenward. You have begun the greatest adventure life has to offer: the voyage inward.”

“It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.”

“By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.”

“People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”

“You'll start talking, and pretty soon we'll all start nodding, and then the next thing you know, I'm hang gliding off the Eiffel Tower at night, being chased by ninja vampires”

“Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.”

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

“Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.”

“It was quite impossible to describe.

Here is what it looked like.

It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.”

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

“Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.”

“I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.”

“Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”

“Stella:
And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby..
[she smiles to herself]
Blanche:
I guess that is what is meant by being in love..”

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

“Be happy.
It's one way of being wise.”

“I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.”

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.”

“…I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me.”

“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”

“Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive.”

“Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.”

“I wish I hadn't cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out.
I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!”

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

“this satsangh?’ You just drop that. You don’t have to get anything, okay? You don’t have to benefit from this. Just waste half a day and go. (Laughter) Really. ‘What should I get out of my meditation?’ Nothing. Just waste fifteen-twenty minutes every day. So do not meditate; just learn to waste some time. Nothing needs to happen. This is not about resting; this is not about becoming healthy; this is not about becoming enlightened; this is not about reaching heaven. All this is just wasting time. When you are not trying to be anything, not trying to get anywhere, you are being.”

“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”

“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.”

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

“We are not human beings in search of a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings emersed in a human experience.”

“She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.”

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”

“Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go running with Curt today because you don't want to sweat out this straightness. You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do.”

“Being human is a complicated gig. So give that ol' dark night of the soul a hug. Howl the eternal yes!”

“Everyone must work to live, but the purpose of life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others. Only then have we ourselves become true human beings.”

“Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.”

“When all else failed, she tried being reasonable.”

“People and relationships never stop being a work in progress”

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

“Deep at the center of my being there is an infinite well of love.”

“There isn't so much to be afraid of, out there. I can remember thinking it was funny to find that out, on the last night of my life; I'd spent the rest of it being afraid of everything.”

“Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being.”

“Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.”

“Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.”

“What do you want? Where's the goddamn ice I ordered? Where's the booze? There's a war on, man! People are being killed!”

“The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.”

“I wishcould manage to be glad!" the Queen said. "Only I never can remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad whenever you like!”

“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.”

“Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.”

“I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”

“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.”

“Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.”

“◦"At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is”

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

“when i reached the bottom, i finally understood what Guthrie meant when he shouted, "LIBERO!" It was a celebration of being alive”

“Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

“It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.”

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

“The act of meditation is being spacious.”

“A million candles burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one”

“Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.”

“I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.”

“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”

“You ride as a man, fight as a man, and you think as a man-"
"I think as a human being," she retorted hotly. "Men don't think any differently from women- they just make more noise about being able to.”

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”

“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”

“Love is being honest with yourself at all times
being honest with the other person at all times
telling, listening, respecting the truth
and never pretending
Love is the source of reality”

“The more you think about it, the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.”

“Power is being told you're not loved and not being destroyed by it.”

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

“This time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.”

“Aberystwyth (n.)

A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.”

“Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth.”

“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”

“Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.”

“She felt… how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.”

“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”

“We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.”

“It is not difference that dominates the world, but the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, which itself, being truly universal, shows the relativism of perpetual difference to be an illusion.”

“There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.”

“Freedom lies in being bold.”

“No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.”

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”