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
nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mediocrity can creep into our lives if we don't consciously make the best choices.
This quote emphasizes the importance of intentionality in our actions and decisions. It warns that without mindful consideration, we may settle into a life of mediocrity rather than striving for excellence and fulfillment. Richard Bach advocates for a proactive approach to life where every choice is made with care to avoid complacency.
Themes
MediocrityChoicesIntentionalityExcellenceMindfulness
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing excellence in one's career.
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.
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 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
Similar quotes
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.
Charles BaudelaireRead
If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
W. Edwards DemingRead
The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities.
Joan DidionRead
One way to learn to do something right is to do something wrong. Failure must teach us, or surely success will not reward us.
Jim RohnRead
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya AngelouRead