Richard Bach Quotes

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.

No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.

True love stories never have endings.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.

A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.

The simplest things are often the truest.

Look in the mirror and one thing is sure: what we see is not who we are.

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, 'I've got responsibilities.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise.

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.We fear we will not find love,and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we don't have love we will be unhappy.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost.

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.

We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and love!

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me.

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.

Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.

In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.

Anyone desperate enough for suicide... should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try.

There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.

Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, in which there is no love.

We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us?

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

There is such a thing as perfection...and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth....Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.

Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life forms, and they call you crazy.

If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all.

Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.

Sometimes when learning comes before experience It doesn't make sense right away.

Fail at love, and the other tests don't matter.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed...It feels an impulsion...this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.