Quotes About Acceptance

Do they hate the idea of her, because she's different from them, and that in this difference there might be some sort of inferiority or superiority that is hers or theirs, that in the end threatens the potential happiness of everyone?

Most argument, and in fact most conflict, has nothing to do with the present. It's always about the past or the future. People can't agree on the details of what has happened or is going to happen. But we rarely know what has happened, and we never know what is going to happen. What is really at dispute is how we will deal with not knowing.

If people are going to be taken away from him, either through death or a transformation of their personality that makes them into strangers, then he's better off without them.

Lyapunov time sets a horizon beyond which acceptable prediction becomes impossible. For a chaotic electrical circuit, the horizon is something like a thousandth of a second; for the weather, it's unknown but seems to be a few days; and for the solar system itself, five million years.

I'm glad she left me the kids. I'd be lost without them. Lost and bitter. With them here, I'm only bitter.

At minimum, there may be an implication that one of the great challenges for intelligent cultural beings may be to learn to cope with, and perhaps finally accept, a profound and deep sense of uncertainty regarding any larger cosmic sense of meaning and purpose—that such an uncertainty may have to be treated as a kind of empirical question to be possibly addressed over very long time periods as evidence is accumulated, but perhaps without ever obtaining a satisfactory answer.

God dances with the outcast.

Do you know how to turn someone into a monster?" "I'm not sure. No." "Let him be himself without restraint.

There are some questions, after all, that we never get answers to. Some doors remain locked forever, and that's life.

If you don't find forgiveness, you'll never end up with peace,

Life is for living, for moving on, for letting the past lie behind us.

Y]ou are here to learn something. Don't try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.

Lastly, you are here to learn something. Don't try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.

From the newsstands a dozen models smiled up at her from a dozen magazine covers, smiled in thin-faced, high-cheekboned agreement to Kessa's new discovery. They knew the secret too. They knew thin was good, thin was strong; thin was safe.

She sat for a long time in the chair, rocking gently, wishing she were thinner. Somehow that would make all of this turmoil vanish.

I expected no miracles; I wasn't young enough for dreams; I knew in my bones that I couldn't escape my troubles by changing the view from my window.

When you hold hands with the dead, eventually they pull you into the grave.

Racism is beyond common sense and has no place in our society.

I don't want to go on much longer, really. I think that would suggest a lack of imagination. A certain lack of dignity also.

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Epictetus was a living example of the Stoic philosophy he embraced, which placed great value on the dignity of the self and a graceful acquiescence to those things over which the self had no control.

A man dies only once. The dread of death causes far more misery than the thing itself, and I shall not submit to it. It's only a short walk from here to the house of Lucius, and an even shorter walk from there to my house. I shall be perfectly safe.

Stoics like Marcus had long recommended such a practice—to concentrate entirely and exclusively on the present moment, and if that moment contained no physical suffering, then to be content.

You know the Etruscan saying: 'Once grieving starts it never ends, so there's no point in grieving an hour earlier than you must.