Richard Bach Quotes

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

True love stories never have endings.

Sense of family is enormously important to me. In the larger sense, we're all of us family; we're all of us soulmates.

I do everything myself, from engine start to engine shutdown. In a war, I will face alone the missiles and the flak and the small-arms fire over the front lines. If I die, I will die alone.

If you don't want to be a teacher, you'd better get off this planet.

Anyone desperate enough for suicide... should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try.

A Name Is A Label, And As Soon As There Is A Label, The Ideas Disappear And Out Comes Label-Worship And Label-Bashing, And Instead Of Living By A Theme Of Ideas, People Begin Dying For Labels... And The Last Thing The World Needs Is Another Religion.

Languages are fluffy big pillows stuffed between nations - what others say is muffled and nearly lost in them, and when we speak their grammar we get feathers in our mouth. It's worth it. What pleasure to phrase an idea, even in child's words, slowly, and sail it across the gulf in another language to a different-speaking human being!

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.

Nothing good is a miracle, nothing lovely is a dream.

When we're born on this planet, we're taught to believe that what we see is real. But as we grow in understanding, we recognize first that we've been hypnotized by that reaching, and second that it's within our power to de-hypnotize ourselves. And as we do that, the illusion appears to change, to come in harmony with what we most value. If we most value love, we will begin to see more and more love and joy and adventure-creative expressions of life shimmering everywhere around us.

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture. We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it to gravel, we can shape it into glory. Examples from every other life are left for us to see, lifeworks finished and unfinished, guiding and warning. Near the end our sculpture is nearly finished, and we can smooth and polish what we started years before. We can make our progress then, but to do it we must see past the appearances of age.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.

The way to tell if your job is done: if you're alive, you've got a job.

Win by losing. Before your outer walls break, as break they must, build an inner place to protect your truth. Protect that you are infinite life, choosing its playground; protect that the world you know exists with your consent and for your own good reasons; protect that your purpose and mission is to shine love in your own playful way, in the moments you decide will be most dramatic.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

The airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren't destructable.

What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it What if I could meet a super-advanced ... what if a Siddhartha or a Jesus came into our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them And what if I could meet him in person, if he were flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me.

Were we, also, hiking along some cosmic journal page? Were the events about us all part of a message we could understand, if only we found the right perspective from which to read them? Somehow, with our long series of miracles, I thought so.

Each of us is free to move our consciousness through that infinite pattern of possibilities as we please. If we're filled with fears, or if we trust the fears of others, we'll choose a path in which our city falls into the sea, or a path in which a third world war vaporizes us, or whatever other disaster is most thrilling or horrifying or fascinating for us.

You're never given a dream without the power to make it true.

If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

Through default or intention, unaware or by design, we not only choose but create the visible outer conditions that are most resonant to our inner state of being.

A tiny change today brings us to a dramatically different tomorrow. There are grand rewards for those who pick the high hard roads, but those rewards are hidden by years. Every choice is made in the uncaring blind, no guarantees from the world around us.

Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book.

Everything in this book may be wrong. - The Savior's Manual

Part of us is always the observer, and no matter what, it observes. It watches us. It does not care if we are happy or unhappy, if we are sick or well, if we live or die. It’s only job is to sit there on our shoulder and pass judgment on whether we are worthwhile human beings.

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

How easy it is to be compassionate when it's yourself you see in trouble.

One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.

Of course there’s destiny, but destiny doesn’t push you where you don’t want to go. You’re the ones who choose. Destiny is up to you.

don't you think between here and now we will see each other once or twice?

No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are.

Life tells you nothing, it shows you everything.

The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy.

Shop for security over happiness and we buy it at that price.

By your choice dwell you now in the world which you have created. What you hold in your heart shall be true, and what you most admire, that shall you become.

When you're flying, an airplane doesn't care who you are; it doesn't care how much money you make or don't make. All it cares about is: How well do you fly? How well do you know the airplane? How well do you know the sky?

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks.

There are grand rewards for those who pick the high hard roads, but those rewards are hidden by years.

Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.

You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.

Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions.

Thousands of volumes have been written about aviation, but we do not automatically have thousands of true and special friends in their authors. That rare writer who comes alive on a page does it by giving of himself, by writing of meanings, and not just of fact or of things that have happened to him. The writers of flight who have done this are usually found together in a special section on private bookshelves.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life.