The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.
Richard BachRead
Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Goodbyes are often necessary, but they lead to reunions with friends.
This quote by Richard Bach expresses the importance of farewells in the journey of relationships, particularly friendship. It suggests that although parting can be difficult, it is a part of life that paves the way for future meetings, reaffirming the idea that true friendships can withstand the test of time and distance.
Themes
FarewellFriendsGoodbyesReunionFriendship
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation ceremony, one might use this quote to comfort classmates as they part ways.
More from Richard Bach
All quotes βJonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother_x000D_ _x000D_ 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_x000D_ _x000D_ gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else,_x000D_ _x000D_ Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
Richard BachRead
True love stories never have endings.
Richard BachRead
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.
Richard BachRead
From time to time it's fun to close our eyes, and in that dark say to ourselves, 'I am the sorcerer, and when I open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created, and for which I and only I am completely responsible.' Slowly then, eyelids open like curtains lifting stage-center. And sure enough, there's our world, just the way we've built it.
Richard BachRead
If our body is a perfect expression of our thought about body, and if our thought about body is that itβs condition has everything to do with inner image and nothing to do with time, then we donβt have to be impatient for being too young or frightened of being too old.
Richard BachRead
Similar quotes
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends.
Tom WaitsRead
... the friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves.
AristotleRead
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
EpicurusRead
Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.
Graham GreeneRead
Strangers he gulls, but friends make fun of him.
PhaedrusRead