Quotes About Transformation

There are times when you don't know yourself. There are times when you don't want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before.

She was--I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is--one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.

Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.

But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.

Though loss did not pass from one person to another liker a baton; it just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And, she thought, scratching the coarseness of the horse's mane, it did not leave once lodged, did it, simply changed form and asked repeatedly for attention and care, as each year revealed a new knot to cry out and consider - smaller, sure, but never gone.

Now she and the widow had something in common, though loss did not pass from one person to another like a baton. It just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And she thought, scratching the coarseness of the horses's mane, it did not leave, once lodged, did it? It simply changed form, and asked repeatedly for attention and care as each year revealed a new knot to cry out and consider, smaller, sure, but never gone...Out of my body, these beautiful monsters.

our changes in height remained unmarked on the door frames, so we grew up tall on our own without proof

If it isn't good, let it die. If it doesn't die, make it good.

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane's ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us." P. 38-39

We must, between periods of digging in the dark, endeavour always to transform our tears into knowledge.

The prestige of the news is founded on the unstated assumption that our lives are forever poised on the verge of critical transformation thanks to the two driving forces of modern history: politics and technology.

Many people after a horrific few months or years of breakdown, will say: "I don't know how I'd ever have gotten well if I hadn't fallen ill".

The constant calls of the screens, some accompanied by the impatient pulsing of a cursor, suggest with what ease our seemingly entrenched lives might be altered were we simply to walk down a corridor and onto a craft that in a few hours would land us in a place of which we had no memories and where no one knew our name.

having acquired a skill at turning grief into ideas

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

Journeys are the midwives of thought.

She had always been good at duty until she started reading.

With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized, I am more than I was an hour ago.

Everything will change when your desire to move on exceeds your desire to hold.

Don't wait for the world to change. Change your mind about the world.

Temporary discomfort pales in the face of long-term awakening.