Pat > Pat's Quotes

“Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.”
― Shannon Alder, 300 Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It's Too Late

“Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.”
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“We are not alien visitors to this planet, after all but natural residents and relatives of every living entity here. This earth is where we came from and where we'll all end up when we die, and during the interim, it is our home, And there's no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don't at least marginally understand our home.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

“Revere your senses; don't degrade them with drugs, with depression, with willful oblivion. Try to notice something new every day, Eustace said. Pay attention to even the most modest of daily details. Even if you're not in the woods, be aware at all times. Notice what food tastes like, notice what the detergent aisle in the supermarket smells like and recognize what those hard chemical smells do to your senses; notice what bare feet feel like; pay attention every day to the vital insights that mindfulness can bring. And take care of all things, of every single thing there is - your body, your intellect, your spirit, your neighbors, and this planet. Don't pollute your soul with apathy or spoil your health with junk food any more than you would deliberately contaminate a clean river with industrial sludge. You can never become a real man if you have a careless and destructive attitude, Eustace said, but maturity will follow mindfulness even as day follows night.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

“writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an "urban Thoreau") set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of "work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

“According to convention, I am not simply what I am doing now. I am also what I have done, and my conventionally edited version of my past is made to seem almost more the real “me” than what I am at this moment. For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final. It is the firm basis for predictions of what I will be in the future, and so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is!”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Way of Zen

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to create melodrama. This is the part that thinks there’s a reason not to be happy. You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being. In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. You’re going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Billions of things are going on in this world. You can think about it all you want, but life is still going to keep on happening.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“You're floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy, and possessiveness. If you had no fear, you could be perfectly happy living in this world.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“It is not just do do do. It is not just be be be. It is do be do be do.”
― Amit Goswami

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky