Imagining Yourself Quotes

Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn on you. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Well, it has to do with very deep things, because it might be that imagining yourself as a girl is a diminishment. But it is something that when I made "The Devil Wears Prada" it was the first time in my life, 30 years of making movies, that a man came up and said I know how you felt. I know how you felt. I have a job like that. People understand. ~ Meryl Streep

Your reaction makes me deliciously curious. Will you be kept awake tonight wondering if I knew it was you? Imagining yourself under me?"
-Madison Thorne Grey, Sustenance ~ Madison Thorne Grey

when you spend
all your time
imagining yourself
in other people's shoes,

your own story
goes unwritten,

& there is nothing
more painful
than that. ~ Amanda Lovelace

You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Ah! candid and unadulterated mind! you have learned early to reflect; but take care lest this habit, hitherto so well applied, should totally unfit you for society. It will strew thorns in your path, while other young women of your age seek only flowers. By imagining yourself in the place of others, as you now continually do, you will learn to feel for all the unhappy, or even for those who appear so; whereas it might save a great deal of (for the most part useless) pain, if you could contrive to feel only for yourself. ~ Charlotte Turner Smith

Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.
Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.
Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap. ~ SARK

When people look at clouds they do not see their real shape, which is no shape at all, or every shape, because they are constantly changing. They see whatever it is that their heart yearns for. ~ Jose Eduardo Agualusa

I was always reaching for love, but it turns out love doesn't involve reaching. I was always dreaming of the big love, the ultimate love, the love that would sweep me off my feet or 'break open the hard shell of my lesser self' (Daisaku Ikeda). The love that would bring on my surrender. The love that would inspire me to give everything. As I lay there, it occurred to me that while I had been dreaming of this big love, this ultimate love, I had, without realizing it, been giving and receiving love for most of my life. As with the trees that were right in front of me, I had been unable to value what sustained me, fed me, and gave me pleasure. And as with the trees, I was so busy waiting for and imagining and reaching and dreaming and preparing for this huge big love that I had totally missed the beauty and perfection of the soft-boiled eggs and Bolivian quinoa. ~ Eve Ensler

We are only qualified to administer mercy, not judgment, because we will pull up many a beautiful stalk of wheat, imagining him a weed. ~ Jen Hatmaker

I want to know, sir-when shall I find God?" "You have found Him." "O no, sir, I don't think so!" My guru was smiling. "I am sure you aren't expecting a venerable Personage, adorning a throne in some antiseptic corner of the cosmos! I see, however, that you are imagining that the possession of miraculous powers is knowledge of God. One might have the whole universe, and find the Lord elusive still! Spiritual advancement is not measured by one's outward powers, but only by the depth of his bliss in meditation. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Fiction is not a dream. Nor is it guesswork. It is imagining based on facts, and the facts must be accurate or the work of imagining will not stand up. ~ Margaret Culkin Banning

[It] could be argued that the favorite sin of Satan would not be vanity, as described in 'Devil's Advocate', or even unbelief in the existence of the devil, as described in 'The Usual Suspects,' but the imagining of a generic, Christless God. The very essence of the Christian faith centers on the identity of Jesus Christ as God's only begotten Son, who alone is the source of salvation and author of faith (Acts 4:12). So it stands to reason that Satan's favorite sin is the belief in a God without Jesus, because that is a god without atonement or redemption and that is what populates hell in the name of heaven. ~ Brian Godawa

Basically, the world is a giant shithole. But some of us are capable of imagining something better. ~ Claire LaZebnik

When I talk to students or young writers about the importance of being unafraid to take controversial positions, I'm struck by the degree to which they can't entertain a thought, much less commit one to paper, without imagining the cacophony of snark they'll get in response. ~ Meghan Daum

He knew that he'd known her for less than a week, but now that she was gone he was continually probing his feelings for her, the way he might probe a sore tooth with his tongue, engaging her in imaginary conversations, imagining her saying such delightful things. ~ Robert Hellenga

But the guy sitting at the table next to me who'd been imagining killing his wife and was now imagining seducing me wasn't the problem. No, it was the guy sitting across from me, the man with the bright orange hunting cap pulled low over his eyes, the guy waiting for the right moment to rob the cafe ... he was the one who worried me. ~ Lori Brighton

One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell me how good they were in the past. Same with countries. You don't want to forget your identity. I am glad that you were great in the fourteenth century, but that was then and this is now. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh."
In societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too many days looking backward. They see dignity, affirmation, and self-worth not by mining the present but by chewing on the past. And even that is usually not a real past but an imagined and adorned past. Indeed, such societies focus all their imagination on making that imagined past even more beautiful than it ever was, and then they cling to it…, rather than imagining a better future and acting on that. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

"Pounding steps approached in the night. Malachi appeared out of the black, shirtless and dripping despite the cool evening air. (He was out for a run and just returned.) His talesm seemed to glow when he caught sight of her, a low sliver light in the darkness. He said nothing, shooting Rhys a glare as he walked past them and into the house.

'Has he kissed you?' Rhys asked when Malachi was gone.
'Yes, on the island.'
'Was it more than fine?' (She had described Rhy's kiss as 'fine' previous to this scene.)
Her breath left her body in a rush of memories. 'So much more than fine.'
He nudged her shoulder with his own. 'Then don't be stubborn, go to him.'

Fifteen minutes and another glass of wine later, Ava knocked on his door. Malachi opened it, holding a towel. He'd showered, and a few drops of water still clung to his tanned shoulders. He wore a pair of loose pants and a guarded expression.
'What do you want?'
'I kissed Rhys.'
Now she knew she wasn't imagining it. The tattoos pulsed silver in the dim light of the hall. Ava forced her eyes back to Malachi's face which was locked down tight. Only a tic in his jaw told Ava her words have even been heard.
His voice was low and thick with tension. 'Get that out of your system?'
'Felt a little like kissing my brother.'
He dropped the towel and tugged her into the room.'This won't' " ~ Elizabeth Hunter

He came to the conclusion that humans confused the content with the container.
They would gorge themselves on great plates of inferior food, imagining it to be delicious because there was simply so much of it. Or, they would make half wits their leaders, merely because they were pleasing to the eye, or because their words were spoken in honeyed voices.
And when it came to information, they would champion weighty tomes that contained almost no real content, while shunning small books that imparted real truth. ~ Tahir Shah

There's nothing scarier than hearing someone you love cry, except imagining a world where that sound stops. Suddenly I can't breathe. Can't be here. There's nothing scarier than loving someone. ~ Emily Henry

No one may force anyone to be happy according to his manner of imagining the well-being of other men; instead, everyone may seek his happiness in the way that seems good to him as long as he does not infringe on the freedom of others to pursue a similar purpose, when such freedom may coexist with the freedom of every other man according to a possible and general law. ~ Immanuel Kant

There are songs about abortions, about slashing your arms with razors, about imagining your own funeral in New Orleans, about rock stars cheating on their wives, sex. ~ Courtney Love

For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes. ~ Pema Chodron

That 99 of compulsive thinkers' thinking is about themselves that 99 of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them and then weirdly that if they stop to think about it that 100 of the things they spend 99 of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences are never good. Then that this connects interestingly with the early-sobriety urge to pray for the literal loss of one's mind. In short that 99 of the head's thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. ~ David Foster Wallace

Adin looked up at Donte, who was then in the middle of taking a sip of his wine. He took in Donte's demonically beautiful face, long and angular, with its hooded eyes and high cheekbones, its wine-darkened lips. He watched as Donte savored it, imagining the warmth of the wine on the inside of Donte's mouth and against his tongue. He could almost feel it as it slid down the column of Donte's throat, teasing his Adam's apple into a subtle bob, and suddenly Adin was the wine, slipping down that throat, and just as inexplicably, Adin felt Donte's mouth on him everywhere at once, biting ... licking ... sucking. Adin's breath sped up; his skin warmed with the beginnings of a flush brought on by arousal. ~ Z.A. Maxfield

Though I work in New York City, in an office about a mile from the World Trade Center, I was not in New York City when the planes struck. I was on a plane above the Atlantic Ocean, heading back to New York from a family reunion and celebration in Europe. I had said good-bye to my husband in London; he was staying for a wedding of a business friend. I couldn't wait to see my kids and my parents, who would be waiting for me at a Little League game in our town, about thirty-five miles from New York City. An hour and a half into the flight, I suddenly had the feeling that the plane was making a slow turn. Nobody else seemed to notice. I sat nervously, hoping I was imagining it. But then a stewardess made an announcement. "There has been a catastrophic event affecting all of North American airspace," she said. "We are returning ~ Lauren Tarshis

For years I'd been an expert at longing, an expert at loving from the state of not-quite-having, an expert at daydreaming and sinking back into the plush furniture of cinematic imagining. ~ Leslie Jamison

When you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention. ~ Jose Saramago

Many exiles leave the mainstream church and engage in the kinds of things we've looked at already: living an authentic life, struggling for global justice, showing compassion, pursuing vocation as a way of doing God's work. But often they do it alone, imagining that it's either the conventional church or no church at all. ~ Michael Frost

I had all kinds of fantasies, like a lot of girls, but did I actually go through the motions of planning a wedding and buying bridal magazines and imagining things and setting up who would play what role? No. Because as I grew up, I started to believe that I would be one of those gals that never got married. ~ Sara Ramirez

There's nothing in this courtyard, after all, that wasn't here in 1977; maybe it's not this year but that one, and everything that follows is still to come ... For if the evidence points to anything, it's that there is no one unitary City. Or if there is, it's the sum of thousands of variations, all jockeying for the same spot. This may be wishful thinking; still, I can't help imagining that the points of contact between this place and my own lost city healed incompletely, left the scars I'm feeling for when I send my head up the fire escapes and toward the blue square of freedom beyond. And you out there: Aren't you somehow right here with me? I mean, who doesn't still dream of a world other than this one? Who among us--if it means letting go of the insanity, the mystery, the totally useless beauty of the million once-possible New Yorks--is ready even now to give up hope? ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining. ~ Annie Besant

It's been very much in the blood since I started imagining films or shooting with 8mm when I was a kid. I made some films and thought about films, but then I went into writing. Becket is something that's definitely on the cards. We have to see where that fits in the schedule, because it's a big picture and I have a lot of writing obligations at the moment. I'm wary of anything with a budget over a certain amount. ~ William Monahan

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I was so girlie and ambitious, I was practically a drag queen. I wanted to be everything at once: a prima ballerina, an actress, a model, a famous artist, a nurse, an Ice Capades dancer, and Batgirl. I spent inordinate amounts of time waltzing around our living room with a doily on my head, imagining in great detail my promenade down the runway as the new Miss America, during which time I would also happen to receive a Nobel Prize for coloring. ~ Susan Jane Gilman

Her rocking chair of carved wood and woven cane tilted between this world and another that was beyond imagining, wafting scents of talcum and medicinal tea, auras of lace-edged santos whose eyes rolled up to a heaven too close for comfort. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

What did I tell you about playing the martyr card?" Andrew asked. "You said no one wanted it," Nathaniel said. "You didn't tell me to stop." "It was implied." "I'm stupid, remember? I need things spelled out." "Shut up." "Am I at ninety-four yet?" "You are at one hundred," Andrew said. "What happened to your face?" Nathaniel swallowed hard against a rush of nausea. "A dashboard lighter." He winced at the awful sound Nicky made. The groan of a quickly-shifting mattress almost swallowed up Aaron's ragged curse. Nathaniel looked back without thinking, needing to see who was on the move, and saw Aaron had rolled off the bed to go stand with Nicky. Turning meant the others got a look at his burned cheek. Kevin recoiled so hard he slammed into the wall behind him. He clapped a protective hand over his own tattoo and Nathaniel knew he was imagining Riko's reaction to this atrocity. This time it was Dan stopping Matt from getting up, her knuckles white against his dark shirt and her head turned away. Matt started to fight free but settled for a hoarse, "Jesus, Neil. The fuck did they do to you? ~ Nora Sakavic

Exercise II.
Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. I have written an example to get you started:
Dear Diary,
I spent the morning admiring my skin elasticity.
God alive, I feel supple. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Imagining what would happen if you changed one thing you do on a daily basis - and thinking about how that change would affect everything else - is a clever way to conquer seemingly impossible scenarios and consider how even the smallest thing you deal with impacts everything else you do. ~ Tanner Christensen

I drank some too-hot coffee and scowled at him, annoyed although I couldn't remember why. The light from the lounge was leaking in, highlighting his spiky blond hair. I decided that must be it.
"You really hate my hair, don't you?" he asked, a smile flickering over his lips so fast I might have imagined it.
"Yeah"
"Why?"
I reached out to touch it, and was surprised as always to find it mostly soft. Just a little stiff in places from whatever product he used on it. It felt weird, imagining Pritkin having anything in his hair but sweat. But he must have; nobody's did that all on its own.
"It's like ... angry hair," I said, trying to pat it down and failing miserably.
He caught my wrist. "Most people would say that suits me."
"I'm not most people."
"I know. ~ Karen Chance

I said 'I was imagining you as a little boy, and as a teenager, and as an old man.'
He said: 'I was looking at you and thinking how young you look, and how old at the same time. ~ Gwendoline Riley

I was born imagining myself with an apron on, with pies cooling on the window sill and babies crying upstairs. I thought that all that stuff would somehow anchor me to the planet, that it was the weight I needed to keep from just flying off into space. ~ Carrie Fisher

I wish I could blame the solar storm
that blitzed the earth with electromagnetic rays,
rerouted several commercial airlines,
and caused all the geese to mistakenly fly west,
the secret compass needles in their heads
playing spin the bottle over a rowdy Pacific.
Satellite communications were disrupted,
electric eels in Peru forgot how to sing,
and for a few seconds all the iPhones in the world
flickered to black, during which time
everyone raised their eyes and noticed
moths shivering like tiny chandeliers.
The truth is your glance shortcuts every traffic light
in my heart and now no one's in charge,
I'm accelerating down the expressway
of a tuba's gold dream. With one outburst
from your hair, I sputter like a firefly drowning
in champagne. Just imagining the charged particles
of your lips colliding with mine
and I'm watching the northern lights,
those bodies flaring across midwinter sheets of sky ~ Katherine Rauk

But there are not a few who would be indignant at having their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining Him better than He is. ~ George MacDonald

That's the hard work of writing. The imagining. ~ Jincy Willett

If you ask me if I'm imagining it again, I'm going to punch you out, Dead Man Walking."
Michael raised his eyebrows and glanced at Eve. "He doesn't sound crazy."
"Er," she clarified, "crazier. He sounds like he's back to normal, which is baseline crazy. ~ Rachel Caine

We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

The Tantric view is that there is already a complete Buddha dormant within each of us, but we've individually and collectively become addicted to horror movies that we mistake for documentaries. From this perspective, our whole society is caught up in a kind of shared horror story, imagining ourselves as zombie consumers rather than empowered citizens: afraid, insecure, incapable beings who have no choice but to wander through life grasping after fleeting pleasures, needlessly competing with each other instead of collaborating, isolating ourselves from the plight of those whose stories we don't understand. Because our whole society is both constructing and watching this shared screenplay simultaneously, the physical world begins to take on the qualities of this horror movie, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the theater of our experience from the screen of our own projections. ~ Ethan Nichtern

We don't go further than what Marx called the exchange value of the actual object- we don't think about the relations that that object embodies- and were important to the production of that object, whether it's our food or our clothes or our iPads or all the materials we use to acquire an education at an institution like this. That would really be revolutionary to develop a habit of imagining the human relations and non-human relations behind all of the objects that constitute our environment. ~ Angela Davis

The Beauty of It If all I have is Now, where will I look for Joy? Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have? At first, this might seem scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my tired head again and again to find all I need is right where I am. But being human, I stray and dream of lives other than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something just out of reach to strive for. It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell, exposing a softness that has always been, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form. It glows. I think it is the one spirit we all share. ~ Mark Nepo

But, imagining Scott's nights here, I populated the emptiness. This had been one of his places and some small part of his spirit had been left here. Holding my own brief séance for my brother, I conjured vivid faces and loud nights. I saw that smile of his, sudden as a sunray, when he loved what you were saying. I saw the strained expression when he felt you must agree with him and couldn't get you to see that. I caught the way the laughter would light up his eyes when he was trying to suppress it. I heard the laughing when it broke. He must have had some nights here. He had lived with such intensity. The thought was my funeral for him. Who needed possessions and career and official achievements? Life was only in the living of it. How you act and what you are and what you do and how you be were the only substance. They didn't last either. But while you were here, they made what light there was – the wick that threads the candle-grease of time. His light was out but here I felt I could almost smell the smoke still drifting from its snuffing. ~ William McIlvanney

I was a slave, but never a fool. This empire is vast beyond imagining and we have killed only a fraction of the force they will bring against us. They will kill us, all of us, for we are slaves and we cannot be allowed even the barest hope of freedom. Without us, they have no empire. ~ Anthony Ryan

Empathy is a creative act. It is the act of imagining ourselves not only in another's shoes, but perhaps inhabiting their very heart and soul. ~ Michele Jennae

I am not trying to seduce you.

"I know that. But please, Mrs. Robinson. This is difficult for me."

"Why is it," she said

"Because I am confused about things. I can't tell what I'm imagining. I can't tell what's real. I can't --"

"Would you like me to seduce you?"

"What?"

"Is that what you're trying to tell me? ~ Charles Webb

Imagining and visualising the situation prepares you for any challenge ~ Debra Searle

For three months,
a person sits and looks at you,
imagining a kiss. ~ Etgar Keret