Quotes About Detachment

The main reason people fail is they become attached to others who hold them back. Letting go of others and going forward may seem like a lonely and impossible task, but I assure you it is not.

It is necessary to disassociate oneself from those who would interfere with your success in enlightenment, in your career, in your life. They are not worth it.

The terrible office he had held for twenty-five years had placed him far outside the range of any human feelings.

However good-hearted one is, you understand, one eventually stops seeing people who depress you, so in the end Old Dantes was all alone.

Dantès in his cell heard the noise of preparation,—sounds that at the depth where he lay would have been inaudible to any but the ear of a prisoner, who could hear the splash of the drop of water that every hour fell from the roof of his dungeon. He guessed something uncommon was passing among the living; but he had so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that he looked upon himself as dead.

Perhaps in the cold my heart would freeze and I would care nothing for those I was forced to abandon.

Speculation can be more gentle, can take its time, when it is not driven by desire.

She could shut out the whole world, including herself.

You can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth.

As you sit, make peace also with the reality that, after you die, it won't matter to you how you are remembered; you will not be here to experience it. All the grand things that you do or say, all the skyscrapers you build and cover with gold, your elegant tombstone, all will be completely forgotten eventually. Even your children, and their children, too, will be forgotten. That being so, perhaps it is best to begin to erase your presence well before you leave the scene.

Forget pleasure and Ambition

Siempre que le amaban se había sentido igual: satisfecho y frío como un témpano

Thoughts, books, ideas, words – if anything, they make you more alone, because they destroy whatever instinctive loyalties you may once have possessed.

You can't become attached to things, not out here in the wild.

it was like staring at a whitewashed wall, but without all the emotion

It becomes difficult to think or feel in any new ways when you are addicted to your outer world.

Cuando consigas despegar totalmente la atención de tu propio cuerpo, de las personas que forman parte de tu vida, de tus pertenencias, de los lugares que frecuentas e incluso del mismísimo tiempo, olvidarás literalmente la identidad que has forjado mientras vivías como un cuerpo en este espacio-tiempo.

You're going to have to make the transition from being somebody to being no body—which means you have to take your attention off your body, your pain, and your hunger. You're going to have to go from being someone to being no one (taking your attention off your identity as a partner, a parent, and an employee).

She walked past the TV, the smoky blue light illuminating the sharp planes of her face, and I saw that her eyes had the dazed, insomniac glassiness of a long-term drug user or someone who'd been abused so long that she'd ceased to feel anything at all.

I can sit and view the scene with detachment because I know that delays are part of the game. It is what it is – but many people haven't discovered that yet.

The desire to be desire-less is but another desire. The thought that, because this desire purports to be spiritual, it is superior to more mundane desires shows how skilled the mind is at justifying any desire it is attached to.

Don't waste your time trying to win people over that can never be won over.

If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.

So I do know this: Whatever you release, you are released from. What you cling to is that which binds you. You are your own liberator.