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
How can we resent the life we've created for ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit, but us? Who can change it, any time we wish, but us?
Interpretation
We are responsible for our own lives and have the power to change them at any moment.
This quote by Richard Bach emphasizes the idea that individuals are the architects of their own existence. It challenges us to reflect on our life choices, highlighting that blame and credit lie solely with ourselves, and affirms our power to initiate change whenever we desire, reminding us of our agency in shaping our destiny.
In practice
During a motivational speech at a conference, one could use this quote to inspire the audience about taking control of their own lives.
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.
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.
True love stories never have endings.
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.
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.
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.
The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
And I have the others in me. Even when Iβm far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when Iβm all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.
I still believe that any country understands that if they use nuclear weapons, they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational in many ways, but I don't think they're irrational to the point that they're ready to annihilate their own country.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.