Quotes About Acceptance

É por isso que, quando prego e funerais, digo que a morte é a derradeira cura, porque é na morte que nos tornamos finalmente quem somos.

Understanding is often a prelude to forgiveness, but they are not the same, and we often forgive what we cannot understand (seeing nothing else to do) and understand what we cannot pardon.

Fatalism is now offered, not as just one possible philosophical attitude among others with reasons given for and against it, but as a fact backed by the tremendous authority of science.

Think of yourself as being loved, because you are.

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.

For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.

In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.

from Hum, Hum Oh the house of denial has thick walls and very small windows and whoever lives there, little by little, will turn to stone. In those years I did everything I could do and I did it in the dark— I mean, without understanding. I ran away. I ran away again (from poem: Hum, Hum)

If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness. I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn't mind being a rose in a field full of roses. Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.

Not anyone who says I'm going to be careful and smart in the matters of love, who says, I'm going to choose slowly, but only those lovers who didn't choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable-- only those know what I'm talking about in this talking about love.

For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind. Don't love you life too much, it said, and vanished into the world.

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

Where has this cold come from? "It comes from the death of your friend." Will I always, from now on, be this cold? "No, it will diminish. But always it will be with you." What is the reason for it? "Wasn't your friendship always as beautiful as a flame?

We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen.

I believed in the world. Oh, I wanted to be easy in the peopled kingdoms, to take my place there, but there was none that I could find shaped like me.

Owl Poem One has to say this for the rounds of life that keep coming and going; it has worked so far. The rabbit, after all, has never asked if the grass wanted to live. Any more than the owl consults with the rabbit. Acceptance of the world requires that I bow even to you, Master of the night.

what I wanted was to be willing to be afraid

It does no good to bark at the television, I said. I've tried it too. So he stopped.

What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what's easy? It never grew easy, but at least I grew peaceful:

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.

Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

I am sorry for every mistake I have made in my life. I'm sorry I wasn't wiser sooner. I'm sorry I ever spoke of myself as lonely.

I think this is the prettiest world—so long as you don't mind a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life that doesn't have its splash of happiness?

God, rest in my heart and fortify me, take away my hunger for answers