Erica Joy > Erica Joy's Quotes

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”
― Ralph G. Nichols

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
― Rumi

“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”
― Rumi

“There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.”
― Rumi

“Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
― Rumi

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
― Rumi Jalalud-Din

“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
― Rumi

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Cries for help are frequently inaudible.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“I know you're tired but come, this is the way.”
― Jalalu'l-din Rumi

“Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. If the whole world turns against you keep your eyes on the Friend.”
― Rumi

“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background........Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." How It Feels to Be Colored Me”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“I don't go to mythical places with strange men.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“How often attachment is mistaken for love! Even when the relationship is a good one, love is spoiled by attachment, with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”
― Henry Scott Holland, Death is Nothing at All

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. ”
― William James