17 posts tagged “quote”
I've quoted
him a couple of times here in this blog.
I have a calendar in my closet with some beautiful illustrations and Rumi quotes for each month.
But tonight after seeing and "retweeting" a Rumi quote from Deepak Chopra's Twitter feed, I was provoked to look up who Rumi actually was.
As I thought, Rumi's definition of "love" is spiritual and not "romantic". He was a mystic, a spiritual seeker, not a phony or a hack. Although I know people, women mostly I suppose, have perhaps thought of his poetry and the often used pull quotes as high brow foreplay, there is a depth in the teaching of Rumi that transcends, like all real poetry, spirituality and heart/soul expressions.
Rumi talks of love, not like a Hallmark card or a Harlequin romance novel, but like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi and Martin Luther King...
I love a good quote. A snippet of wisdom, a beautiful sentiment expressed well. Hung on my mirror. Posted on my blog. Send in a card. Tucked in my wallet. And if it's about love, and matters of the heart, all the better.
The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart. - Buddha
Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned. - Song of Solomon 8:7
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that. - Martin Luther King
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love - 1 John 4:18
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. - Gandhi
One word frees us from all the weight and pain of the world; that word is Love. - Sophocles
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. - Thomas Merton
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. - 1 John 4:8
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end. - Benjamin Disraeli
Where there is love there is life. - Gandhi
I know of only one duty, and that is to love. - Albert Camus
Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice DEEP LOOKING directed toward the other person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. That is the message of the Buddha. -- Thich Nhat Hahn from "True Love. A Practice for Awakening the Heart'
The path to love isn't a choice, for all of us must find out who we are. This is our spiritual destiny. The path can be postponed; you can lose faith in it or even despair that love exists. None of that is permanent; only the path is. - Deepak Chopra
And I will end with a Rumi quote. One of my favorites:
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. - Rumi
"We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it's gone, its value is incontestable. "
Joyce Carol Oates
a high degree of consciousness.
Choice begins the moment you dis-identify
from the mind and its conditioned patterns,
the moment you become present.
~Eckhart Tolle "The Power of Now"
It costs so much to be a full human being that there are few who have the enlightenment, or the courage to pay the price. . .
One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.
-- Morris L. West The Shoes of a Fisherman, p.254 (1963)
"Don't be afraid of misfortune and do not yearn after happiness. It is, after all, all the same. The bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if hunger and thirst don't claw at your sides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms work, if both eyes can see, and if both ears can hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all.
Rub your eyes and purify your heart--and prize above all else in the world those who love you and wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part with them in anger. After all, you do not know, it may be your last act."
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn, died August 3, 2008
I was reminded of this quote tonight when answering a friend's email about online privacy.
Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. I may not put my hand into the jaws of a snake, but the very sight of the snake need not strike terror into me.
The trouble is that we often die many times before death overtakes us.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
It's interesting how the mind, in an attempt to keep us safe from harm, will jump ahead to conclusions and cultivate worry, which in turn only causes us unecessary harm.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
The first simply and beautifully reminds me to remain open and vulnerable to people and possibilities. The beauty is in the flower, not the bud.
The second quote reminds me to stay mindful of holding close to best intention and remembering to take care of myself. The natural course is one of love - growing, deepening and persistent love that's source is ourselves not the other. Being aware of my emotional state and being present enough to know what I need to take care of myself makes it possible to be available and open enough to give and receive love.
I sometimes think of the connections I have with certain people as being made of tender flesh and bone, mortal connective tissue, a strong and yet vulnerable body or personae who lives between us and has a hand on both our hearts.
We can feed, pamper and nurture that body that connects us; like it's our precious child. If we're good caretakers of it, we will help it grow stronger with our ever present love and attention. If we know it's value, we will fiercely protect it from the dangers we know are out there (and within us) and that our experience has shown us will threaten it's health and make our precious connection less resilient. If we are mindful of our responsibilities and can stay close to the love we feel for each other, we will treat our connections like living and mortal things.
Or we can ignore the precious nature of our connections, use the tender flesh that has a hand on both our hearts to lash out at it's weaknesses or mistakes. If we're not mindful of all the ways that our connection lives and breaths and grows as we do, we will push it too hard or too fast to be stronger than it's able to be; we won't let it grow strong enough and don't care for it well enough before we start testing it and trying to put it to work for us. We come to see the connection as a life raft, a support system, and infinite Atlas who will carry our heaven on his shoulders. We expect that the connection that exists between us is stronger than we are.
If we are not mindful, we will mistakenly think it's purpose is to feed us instead of being nurtured by us. We will expect it to guide us and give us direction, we will call it names, blame it for our failings or our unhappiness. We will cling to its joyous nature, its wellspring of love and energy and assume that they will always be ours for the taking. We will act like it owes us something, like it has no needs of its own, like it has a bank account that never decreases. We will push and probe and test our precious, tender, vulnerable connection assuming that if it's real and true, it has to be strong enough it can take our beatings, our neglect, our lack of consideration, our stupidity and our selfishness.
Too many tests, too many injuries and bruises, too much neglect and mistreatment and the connection withers and dies. Or, as is often the case, because love is strong and doesn't give up easily, it kicks and screams and wails for months and months, taking each of our hearts in its hot little hands and squeezing with all it's might to try to shock us back into being alive and awake to it. But when the pain of those last ditch heart shocks wear off and there's no hope left for recovery, it lets go and the connection is gone. As Anais Nin recognizes "love does not die a natural death".
Vox QotD: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could never fail?
Submitted by BeckyPink.
Whaa-whaaa-whaaat?? I can fail!?
I don't understand what you're talking about here Vox. So that's why I'm modifying the prepopulated title of this answer and taking a few moments from this busy morning to elaborate.
Today's QotD presumes there are things that I'm not doing because I'm afraid of failing. I reject the premise entirely.
First, if there was something I wanted to do, but was afraid of failing, I'd find a way to get over my fears.
Second, there are lots of things I'm afraid of doing because I might kill myself or they'd just be stupid things to do and so, logically speaking, I don't want to do them.
And third, I've failed plenty of times, but that's not a reason to fear living the life you want to live or "attempting" to do anything you really want to do, now is it"?
The topic of fear and it's opposite, love is near and dear to my heart though.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson
This morning I was wondering where the phrase "love is blind" came from and so I looked it up. It's from Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice.
JESSICA: Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains.
I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me,
For I am much ashamed of my exchange:
But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.
Question: do you agree with Shakespeare that love blinds us to our follies? Of course it can, and has and probably will again, but does it always? If we're seeing things perfectly clearly, can you still experience the dizzy, magical, head-in-the-heavens feelings of new love?
Perhaps love is the process of my gently leading you back to yourself.
For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.
Both these quotes, attributed to the author of "The Little Prince", speak to two core things I've been trying to understand better during this past year.
2.) There is enough of everything in the world: enough time, enough resources, enough love. There is the view that looks at the world as a place of scarcity and fear. And then there is the view that the world's abundant, that everything we need is right here for us and within us. Approaching our relationships with love instead of fear is so much easier said than done.
Executive summary (oh dear, I've been working too much!): love starts and ends with ourselves. And fear decreases with each and every full embrace of love.
Let's end on another quote, shall we? This favorite of mine appears to wrap this post up rather nicely.
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
