Gennifer > Gennifer's Quotes

“Everybody has a geography that can be used for change that is why we travel to far off places. Whether we know it or not we need to renew ourselves in territories that are fresh and wild. We need to come home through the body of alien lands.”
― Joan Halifax

“Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me and changed me.”
― Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Mountains have long been a geography for pilgrimage, place where people have been humbled and strengthened, they are symbols of the sacred center. Many have traveled to them in order to find the concentrated energy of Earth and to realize the strength of unimpeded space. Viewing a mountain at a distance or walking around its body we can see its shape, know its profile, survey its surrounds. The closer you come to the mountain the more it disappears, the mountain begins to lose its shape as you near it, its body begins to spread out over the landscape losing itself to itself. On climbing the mountain the mountain continues to vanish. It vanishes in the detail of each step, its crown is buried in space, its body is buried in the breath. On reaching the mountain summit we can ask, “What has been attained?” - The top of the mountain? Big view? But the mountain has already disappeared. Going down the mountain we can ask, “What has been attained?” Going down the mountain the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain disappears, the closer we are to the mountain the more the mountain is realized. Mountain’s realization comes through the details of the breath, mountain appears in each step. Mountain then lives inside our bones, inside our heart-drum. It stands like a huge mother in the atmosphere of our minds. Mountain draws ancestors together in the form of clouds. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the raining of the past. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the winds of the future. Mountain mother is a birth gate that joins the above and below, she is a prayer house, she is a mountain. Mountain is a mountain.”
― Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Mountain’s realization comes through the details of the breath, mountain appears in each step. Mountain then lives inside our bones, inside our heart-drum. It stands like a huge mother in the atmosphere of our minds. Mountain draws ancestors together in the form of clouds. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the raining of the past. Heaven, Earth and human meet in the winds of the future. Mountain mother is a birth gate that joins the above and below, she is a prayer house, she is a mountain. Mountain is a mountain.”
― Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Within and around the earth, within and around the hills, within and around the mountains your authority returns to you.”
― Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Speaking in Creation's tongues, hearing Creation's voices, the boundary of our soul expands. Earth has many voices. Those who understand that Earth is a living being, know this because they have translated themselves to the humble grasses and old trees. They know that Earth is a community that is constantly talking to itself; a communicating universe. And whether we know it or not, we are participating in the web of this community.”
― Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom

“Speaking in Creation's tongues, hearing Creation's voices, the boundary of our soul expands. Earth has many voices. Those who understand that Earth is a living being know this because they have translated themselves to the humble grasses and old trees. They know that Earth is a community that is constantly talking to itself; a communicating universe. And whether we know it or not, we are participating in the web of this community.”
― Joan Halifax

“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.”
― Lao Tzu

“The best teacher is experience. Find the educational in every situation.”
― Bryan Cranston, A Life in Parts

“The strange thing about falling in love is, we know what it looks and feels like. But we can’t really explain why it occurs and where all the madness it brings with it comes from.

“Or why it just seems to happen like magic between two particular people but not others.

“The appearance of love seems totally irrational, inexplicable and without reason. Yet, when it happens it feels like the only thing that makes any sense. True love, I guess, is when it keeps on making sense after you actually get to know the other person.”
― Charlie Maclean, Unforgettable

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“The rain falling. Summer rain on the earth. Night rain. The darkness and warmth and flood of passion. Tonight the earth is loved-loved and possessed. Her lover's arms are round her: and she is silent.”
― James Joyce, Poems and Exiles

“When we are still,
all settles into place.
We take time to see the beauty.
We take time to see the heart.
And we naturally gravitate
to others
that resonate that inner calm.
When we are still.”
― Tom Althouse, The Frowny Face Cow

“We are puzzle pieces, bragging about being puzzle pieces, rather than being the picture.”
― Tom Althouse, The Frowny Face Cow

“Doing what you love, with those you love, is an adventurous type of success. The kind that can not be taken away, often discovered by those who have had much taken away, and saw it as an opportunity to re-access their path, and reset from the crucible of shared and beneficial dreams.”
― Tom Althouse, The Frowny Face Cow

“Adversity tests what the soul can endure.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
― Bell Hooks

“Be you, love you. All ways, always.”
― Alexandra Elle

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.”
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
― Barack Obama

“There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.”
― Barack Obama

“Naming children after their parents is stripping them of an identity, reminding them who they belong to.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh