Quotes from Richard Bach

Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!

Character comes from following our highest sense of right, from trusting ideas without being sure they'll work.

The world is a dream, you say, and it's lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky." "No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?

When we put up with any situation we don't have to put up with, it's not because we're dumb. We put up with it, because we want the lesson only that situation can teach, and we want it more than freedom myself.

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.

Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn't plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall.

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

Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it.

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.

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

The simplest things are often the truest.

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 a butterfly.

Sully,for shame! Jonathan said in reproach, and don't be foolish! What are we trying to practice everyday? If our friendship depends on things like 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?

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are,and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well.

If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was.

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.

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

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

Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

How much to learn if we could spend one hour, spend twenty minutes, with the us we will become! How much could we say to the us we were.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it however.

It's not when you start that makes your success in the world, but when you quit.

Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!