Quotes About Detachment

sell your cellular phone

Actually, it was the easiest thing I have ever done. The decision to give up my practice and all my worldly possessions felt natural. Albert Camus once said that 'Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present.

Ironic. The less you cared about receiving the stuff most of us care about at work, the more you received it

But the fullness of life escapes us either way, whether we are holding on or pushing away, I realize now, at this late hour. For at the heart of love is openness. An unfettered openness of heart and spirit, it seems to me, is what intimacy—with another and with all life—really means. That openness is what I now believe true detachment to be.

I was looking at everything in the other's face, the other's body, coldly : lashes, toenail, thin eyebrows, thin lips, the luster of the eyes, a mole, a way of holding a cigarette; I was fascinated-fascination being, after all, only the extreme of detachment-by a kind of colored ceramicized, vitrified figurine in which I could read, without understanding anything about it, the cause of my desire. )

The will to possess must cease--but also the *non* will to possess must not be seen.

As a philanthropist, Rockefeller chose to cultivate a wise detachment from his creations and told Harper that he saw himself as a silent partner in the operation

Jack often seemed embarrassed by his remoteness from Pierpont.

Reacher] knew people with houses. He had talked to them, with the same kind of detached interest he would talk to a person who kept snakes as pets or entered ballroom dancing competitions.

There was nothing else in Carbone's six-by-eight cell. Nothing significant, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing explanatory. Nothing that revealed his history, his nature, his passions, or his interests. He had lived his life in secret, buttoned down, like his Saturday-night shirts.

Where's your luggage?" "I don't use any." "You have no stuff?" "I saw a little book in a store at the airport. Apparently we're supposed to get rid of whatever doesn't bring us joy.

He knew from long experience that nobody would try to join him. Nobody ever did. He radiated subliminal stay away signals and sane people obeyed them

Parades always made me cringe—the sight of so many people lockstepping along, chests out, elbows pumping, seemed to denote an unearned pride or a humiliating need for attention. I have generally found something else to do, if any parades were nearby.

We all hold dear the idea that we're the captain of our own soul, and we're in charge, and it's a very scary feeling when we're not. In fact, that's what psychosis is—the feeling of detachment from reality and that you're not in control, and that's a very frightening feeling for anyone.

It's done by everyone minding their own business

Yes, after all, if I were to join you, I might enjoy myself, and wouldn't that be a shame? Please, don't spare me another thought.

Yes, fine, I say, feeling dead inside. They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea who isn't really here.

He was a man who evidently felt very little; she was a woman who felt, perhaps, too much.

I must try to live in society and yet remain untouched by its pitfalls.

I'm at that stage of life where I don't even care of people like me anymore. If you like me, Cool. If you don't, Okay!

A boat may stay in water, but water should not stay in boat. A spiritual aspirant may live in the world, but the world should not live within him.

Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he's free.

When sitting in meditation, say, "That's not my business!" with every thought that comes by.

Only that which cannot be lost in a shipwreck is yours.