Richard bach quotes

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?

One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves.

The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!

How can a deer tell when a leaf falls silent in the forest? She hears it breathing differently.

I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach for a pencil.

All of us are called by something in this world that attracts us. And it doesn't matter what it is - you can be an engine mechanic or an aviator or you can be someone who loves their flower garden or the world of commerce or sailboats.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

Two words: Love leads. Listen to that ring of love within. If we follow that leading of love we'll be guaranteed an adventurous, positive, joyful life.

One of the cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience.

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Don't fear change. It's always for the best.

We magnetize into our lives whatever we hold in our thought.

In order to win, you must expect to win.

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

How can we resent the life we've created for ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit, but us? Who can change it, any time we wish, but us?

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise.

Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.

Life's battles don't always go to the strongest or fastest; sooner or later those who win are those who think they can.

Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.

We don't have rights until we claim them.

Every real teacher is myself in disguise.

If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all.

Thought plus belief equals manifestation.

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

We design our lives through the power of choices.

Boredom between two people doesn't come from being together physically. It comes from being apart mentally and spiritually.

I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.

One way to pick a future is to believe it’s inevitable.

An easy life doesn't teach us anything. In the end it's the learning that matters: what we've learned and how we've grown

Why? What is so wonderful about mass murder that nobody in the history of the world has ever fond any smarter solution to problems than killing everybody who doesn’t agree? Is that the limit of human intelligence?

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?

Did you ever feel that you were missing someone you had never met?

Have you ever felt so at one with the world, with the universe, with everything that is, that you were overcome with love? That is reality. That is the truth. What we make of it is up to us, as the painting of the sunrise is up to the artist. In our world humanity has strayed from that love. It lives hatred and power struggles and manipulations of the earth itself for its own narrow reasons. Continue and no one will see the sunrise. The sunrise will always exist, of course, but people on earth will know nothing of it and finally even stories of its beauty will fade from our knowing.

Every problem in your life carries a gift inside it.

Hate is love without enough data.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

You're never given a dream without the power to make it true.

The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.” “No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.

Judge not by the form of the messenger, but the form of the message.

Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.

Do you ever have the feeling you're a tourist on earth?

Life tells you nothing, it shows you everything.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. Do you think, if you say the word "impossible" enough times, that difficult things will suddenly become easier for you?

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers. The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

Never stop being a kid, Richard. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead.

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.

Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

Your life is a treasure and you are so much more than you know.

There is a kind of silver spiderweb that's spun around the world, and the strands of that web are certain loves and certain understandings. And if we follow those, and if we walk those strands, we're going to meet others at the intersections who have been walking the same way across this web. And when we meet, there's a kind of "I know who you are."

Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well.

When we put up with any situation we don’t have to put up with, it’s not because we’re dumb. We put up with it, because we want the lesson only that situation can teach, and we want it more than freedom myself.

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

Navigate by the same star, unwilling to change, and you find yourself not only off-course but lost.

You wait a lifetime to meet someone who understands you, accepts you as you are. At the end, you find that someone, all along, has been you.

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.We fear we will not find love,and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we don't have love we will be unhappy.

Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit.

You can achieve a goal; you never really achieve your purpose, because your purpose is ongoing. It never stops.

The big thing about writing is three commands: Have fun. Don't think. Don't care.

We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

We design our lives through the power of our choices. We feel most helpless when we've made choices by default, when we haven't designed our lives on our own.

Before you'll change, something important must be at risk.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

I think our learning lies along the path of whatever it is we love.

You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.

You can't solve problems for someone whose problem is that they don't want problems solved.

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

Isn't it strange how much we know if only we ask ourselves instead of somebody else.

There’s no disaster that can’t become a blessing, and no blessing that can’t become a disaster.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

True love stories never have endings.

The space for what you want is already filled with what you settled for instead.

I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me.

Mistakes - call them unexpected learning experiences.

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.

Part One: I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy. Part Two: Everybody else is free to do whatever they feel like doing, for a living. Part Three: Responsible is Able to Respond, able to answer for the way we choose to live. There's only one person we have to answer to, of course, and that is ourselves.

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.

No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.

You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way".

Everything of this life as a mortal is fiction. It seems real, but...

If you want to meet someone who can fix any situation you don't like, who can bring you happiness in spite of what other people say or believe, look in a mirror, then say this magic word: 'Hello.'

When we come to the last moment of this lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is 'What is the quality of our love?'

Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy.

The man who flies an airplane ... must believe in the unseen.

You choose, you live the consequences. Every yes, no, maybe, creates the school you call your personal experience.

The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?

I think the source of our sorrow and the source of our joy are intimately entwined. Our sorrow is that we have forgotten who we are, we have forgotten we are one with that source of all life - absolutely indestructible, perfect, joyful. The source of our joy is when we remember that.

As you believe, so it is for you.

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.

At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck.

If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel.

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture... We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it into gravel, we can shape it into glory.

Cherish yesterday, Dream tomorrow, Live today.

Every step in every proud life is a run from safety to the dark, and the only thing to trust is what we think is true.

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all

The first prerequisite of an advanced being is a sense of humor.