Quotes About Change

The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to understand that a silence that is not clamorous with vexation and worried self-regard can become part of the texture of your mind, can seep into you, moment by moment, and gradually change you.

a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.

We have seen that, like the weather, religion "does lots of different things." To claim that it has a single, unchanging, and inherently violent essence is not accurate. Identical religious beliefs and practices have inspired diametrically opposed courses of action.

We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter.

And before you embark on an argument or a debate, ask yourself honestly if you are ready to change your mind.

The new religious systems reflected the changed economic and social conditions. For reasons that we do not entirely understand, all the chief civilizations developed along parallel lines, even when there was no commercial contact (as between China and the European area).

people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide the enlightenment and consolation that human beings seem to need.

the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars were "the crucible in which some of the competing forces from an earlier age were consumed in the fire and others blended and transmuted into new compounds Ã¢â'¬Â¦ the matrix of all that came after."109

You entered into a Socratic dialogue in order to change; the object of the exercise was to create a new, more authentic self.

changed the course of history, but the process was not yet complete. It was only when Jesus returned at the Parousia that "we shall all be changed" and "death be swallowed up in victory."64 Then and only then would Christ establish the Kingdom, "deposing every sovereignty, authority, and power."65

As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to "forget" old ways of thought in order to meet the current challenges.

In ten short years since the hijrah, Muhammad had irrevocably changed the political and spiritual landscape of Arabia.

All religious people in any age have to make their traditions address the challenge of their particular modernity

The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise designed to produce a profound psychological change in the participants, and because its purpose was that each person should understand the depth of his ignorance, there was no way that anybody could win. Plato

Everything that goes up must come down: that is a law of life, so to strengthen your enemy by yielding to him would actually hasten his decline. The

It is more than their land that you take away from the people whose native land you take. It is their past as well, their roots and their identity. If you take away the things that they have been used to see, and will be expecting to see, you may, in a way, as well take out their eyes.

One day I sold my table-glass, and then in the night thought better of it, so that in the morning I drove to Nairobi and asked the lady who had bought it to call off the deal. I had no place to put the glass, but the fingers and lips of many friends had touched it, they had given me excellent wine to drink out of it; it was keeping an echo of old table-talk, and I did not want to part with it. After all, I thought, it would be an easy thing to break.

Repentance is simply agreeing with God about our wrong and then doing an about-face and walking in the other direction, committing the sin no more.

A man doesn't have to be alive to start the fires of revolution.

Life is full of surprises and not all of them are good.

My marriage to Kincaid is a bit more complicated than I thought. There are certain things we don't agree on, and—" "You wish to change his mind about something," Gregor finished. "How did you know?" "I've noticed that women often have a desire to change men, even the ones they love." "I've noticed that, too." Dougal frowned.

It's funny how many little things you get used to - attached to, even - and never realize until you travel abroad and those things are not available.

Right now, Mama G's memory is like the ocean. It comes and goes, high tide and low tide. But each time, the beach erodes a little bit more.

We have to move forward, sweetheart. And we can't do that if we hold on to what was.