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
For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote contrasts different values among individuals, highlighting the significance of personal aspirations over basic needs.
Richard Bach's quote illustrates the divergence in priorities between the majority and an exceptional individual. While most gulls focus on practical needs like food, one gull prioritizes the experience of flying, symbolizing a deeper pursuit of passion and purpose. It emphasizes the idea that personal fulfillment can transcend ordinary desires and encourages individuals to seek profound experiences that resonate with their true essence.
Themes
FlightAspirationPassionIndividualityFulfillment
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing dreams.
More from Richard Bach
All quotes →Jonathan 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.
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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 it’s condition has everything to do with inner image and nothing to do with time, then we don’t have to be impatient for being too young or frightened of being too old.
Richard BachRead
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And as this is the obvious appearance of things, it must be admitted, till some hypothesis be discovered, which by penetrating deeper into human nature, may prove the former affections to be nothing but modifications of the latter. All attempts of this kind have hitherto proved fruitless, and seem to have proceeded entirely from that love of simplicity which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy.
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Absence, the highest form of presence.
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