Nelly > Nelly's Quotes

“There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.”
― David Benioff, When the Nines Roll Over and Other Stories

“Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.”
― Ann Druyan

“When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago--and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail--it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

“Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.”
― 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

“When a problem is disturbing you, don't ask, "What should I do about it?" Ask, "What part of me is being disturbed by this?”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problem is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“We are constantly trying to hold it all together. If you really want to see why you do things, then don't do them and see what happens.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“To get some distance from this, you first need to get some perspective. Walk outside on a clear night and just look up into the sky. You are sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Though you can only see a few thousand stars, there are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. In fact, it is estimated that there are over a trillion stars in the Spiral Galaxy. And that galaxy would look like one star to us, if we could even see it. You’re just standing on one little ball of dirt and spinning around one of the stars. From that perspective, do you really care what people think about your clothes or your car? Do you really need to feel embarrassed if you forget someone’s name? How can you let these meaningless things cause pain? If you want out, if you want a decent life, you had better not devote your life to avoiding psychological pain. You had better not spend your life worrying about whether people like you or whether your car impresses people. What kind of life is that? It is a life of pain. You may not think that you feel pain that often, but you really do. To spend your life avoiding pain means it’s always right behind you.”
― 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 have to understand that it is your attempt to get special experiences from life that makes you miss the actual experience of life.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Everything will be okay as soon as you
are okay with everything. And that’s the
only time everything will be okay.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“If you decide that you're going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is.This is truly a spiritual path, and it as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Acceptance means events can make it through you without resistance”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“You just let go. It's simply a matter of taking the risk that you are better off letting go than going with the energy.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“You don’t fight the mind. In fact, you don’t even try to change it. You just make a game out of relaxing in the face of its melodrama.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“Life itself is your career, and your interaction with life is your most meaningful relationship. Everything else you’re doing is just focusing on a tiny subset of life in the attempt to give life some meaning. What actually gives life meaning is the willingness to live it. It isn’t any particular event; it’s the willingness to experience life’s events.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“When you are trained, like a great athlete, to immediately relax through your edges when they get hit, then it’s all over. You realize that you will always be fine. Nothing can ever bother you except your edges, and now you know what to do with them. You end up loving your edges because they point your way to freedom. All you have to do is constantly relax and lean into them. Then one day, when you least expect it, you fall through into the infinite. That is what it means to go beyond.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“If you really want to see why you do things, then don’t do them and see what happens.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“You should be experiencing the life that’s happening to you, not the one you wish was happening.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“One is always at home in one's past...”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory