Living For The Self Quotes

Living for the Self [the Soul] is merit karma (you bind merit karma) and living for the worldly life is nothing but demerit karma (you bind demerit karma). ~ Dada Bhagwan

I don't have many friends, not the living, breathing sort at any rate. And I don't mean that in a sad and lonely way; I'm just not the type of person who accumulates friends or enjoys crowds. I'm good with words, but not spoken kind; I've often thought what a marvelous thing it would be if I could only conduct relationships on paper. And I suppose, in a sense, that's what I do, for I've hundreds of the other sort, the friends contained within bindings, pages after glorious pages of ink, stories that unfold the same way every time but never lose their joy, that take me by the hand and lead me through doorways into worlds of great terror and rapturous delight. Exciting, worthy, reliable companions - full of wise counsel, some of them - but sadly ill-equipped to offer the use of a spare bedroom for a month or two. ~ Kate Morton

Initially, it was the unpractical in fashion that brought me to design my own line. I felt that it was much more attractive to cut clothes with respect for the living, three-dimensional body rather than to cover the body with decorative ideas. ~ Jil Sander

Focus is a mental commitment to winning against all odds. Focus is beyond putting things together in order to reach a goal. Focus is longing for the goal; it is conditioning self to connect with the forces needed to achieve said goal. Focus is beyond toiling day and night, it is the mind's eye seeing only the harvests of the future and oblivious of the challenges of the present. ~ Asuni LadyZeal

The trumpet player, Ronnie Hughes, has still got his chops today but for some strange reason the culture doesn't call him because he's 83-years-old. And these people are in their 70s and 80s and 90s and came with such verve every day and would still be shooting these 10 and 12 hour days. So, that in itself made this an extraordinarily special occasion for all of us. It wasn't a job for the crew after a few days, it took on another tone. ~ Dustin Hoffman

People are trying so hard to live through their children. And the children keep trying so hard to live up to their parents, or live them down. Everybody's living through or for or against somebody else. It doesn't make too much sense, and it isn't working too well. ~ Ross Macdonald

In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and put his arms around her, smelling of turpentine.
"The first one is always the hardest," he said.
"The first?"
"The first one you love who dies," he said. "It gets easier, after. ~ Cassandra Clare

Let me put the contrast in a single concrete example. The physician who finds time to give personal attention to his patients and listens to them. carefully probing inner conditions that may be more significant than any laboratory reports, has become a rarity. Where the power complex is dominant, a visit to a physician is paced, not to fit the patient's needs, but mainly to perform the succession of physical tests upon which the diagnosis will be based. Yet if there were a sufficient number of competent physicians on hand whose inner resources were as available as their laboratory aids, a more subtle diagnosis might be possible, and the patient's subjective response might in many cases effectively supplement the treatment. Thoreau expressed this to perfection when he observed in his 'Journal' that "the really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure."

Without this slowing of the tempo of all activities the positive advantages of plenitude could not be sufficiently enjoyed; for the congestion of time is as threatening to the good life as the congestion of space or people, and produces stresses and tensions that equally undermine human relations. The inner stability that such a slowdown brings about is essential to the highest uses of the mind, through opening up that second life which one lives in reflection and contemplation and self-scrutiny. The means to escape from ~ Lewis Mumford

In the course of working on ourselves, we learn in time that when we stay on the surface of ourselves, which is to say when we are identified with and operating from our outer shell - our personality - we suffer. The more asleep we are to the reality beneath our shells, the less we feel that life is fulfilling, meaningful, and pleasurable. Or, in the language of the enneagram, the more fixated we are, the less we partake of the loving nature of reality, for we have lost our connection with Holy Love. Our suffering is not the result of being alone or of being in the wrong relationship, is not because we don't have enough money or because we have too much of it, or because of anything of the sort.

Nor is it because our outer surface doesn't look as pretty as we think it should or because our personality isn't as pleasant as we think it might be. We suffer because we are living at a distance from our depths - it's as simple as that. The more our souls are infused with Being, the better we feel and the better life seems to us, no matter what our outer circumstances happen to be. ~ Sandra Maitri

What I didn't understand, all those years when I was waiting for my life to start, was that it had already started. I was already living it! Those were the most important years, and I didn't even know it. ~ Lee Smith

Lovemaking is the consolation for living in the body, just as art is the consolation for living in the world. ~ Laura Argiri

Follow your heart and take a chance that you'll be wrong. Take a chance that maybe you'll fuck it all up and everyone will say you're crazy. What's the worst that can happen? Face that fear and accept it. Because to silence your heart and forget your dreams is to die while living. LIVE. Don't let the world scare you into being something you're not. Get out there and risk the unusual or you'll have to settle for the ordinary. So, no-one else has done it before? There is no road map for you to follow? Then, you be the first! Pave the way for someone else. Find your courage and follow your heart.
Be brave, wild one, be brave. ~ Brooke Hampton

It's sad. That's a living creature. We don't have the right to take their life away for fashion. ~ Carmen Electra

Do they still hurt?" she whispered in anguished surprise.
"No," Jason said tautly. Shame washed over him in sickening waves as he waited helplessly for her inevitable reaction to the stark evidence of his humiliation.
To his utter disbelief he felt her arms encircle him from behind and the touch of her lips on his back. "How brave you must have been to endure this," she whispered achingly, "how strong to survive it and go on living ... " When she began kissing each scar, Jason rolled to his side and jerked her into his arms. "I love you," he whispered agonizedly, plunging his hands into her luxuriant hair and turning her face up to his. "I love you so much ... ~ Judith McNaught

My soul will dance with Athena's soul; I'll be with her while I sleep; I'll wake up sweating and go into the kitchen for a glass of water. I'll understand that in order to combat ghosts you must use weapons that form no part of reality. Then, following the advice of my grandmother, I'll place an open pair of scissors on my bedside table to snip off the end of the dream. The next day, I'll look at the scissors with a touch of regret, but I must adapt to living in the world again or risk going mad. ~ Paulo Coelho

During the Eighties, when I was hurting for money, I thought, 'Hang on a minute - I can paint.' I was living in New York and I thought it would get the grocery money coming in, and it escalated from there. ~ Ronnie Wood

When you depersonalize abrasive behavior and see it as a call for help you become a catalyst for the best kind of change. ~ Marilyn Suttle

reduce the amount of pesticides you ingest by 90 percent if you buy organic for these 12 fruits and vegetables: apples, celery, cherries, imported grapes, lettuce, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, spinach, strawberries, and sweet bell peppers. Because milk fat can harbor traces of hormones (including rBGH) given to cows, it's also crucial to choose organic dairy products. ~ Whole Living Magazine

Waiting is a large part of living. Great, passive, negative chunks of our time are consumed by waiting, from birth to death. Waiting is a special kind of activity - if activity is the right word for it - because we are held in enforced suspension between people and places, removed from the normal rhythms of our days and lives. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable

Dear Gerald,

I know it's a little early for me to be saying this, but I think you're probably the best friend I've ever had.
This isn't saying much because I've never had a best friend.
Once I thought I had a best friend, but then she started to get interested in clothes and we ended up not being friends anymore.

I like you a lot because you give a shit, Gerald. You really give a shit.
I know we don't talk much about some stuff because of the rules, but I never felt like anyone could give a shit about Hannah McCarthy.
Everyone knows I'm the junkman's daughter and I decided awhile ago that I was okay with that because there's nothing I can do about that.
And today you turn 17 and I think it's about time that you know that you're the boy from TV and until you leave here, you will always be the boy from TV and I will always be the junkman's daughter.
And I feel a bond with you because of this.
Because neither of us is happy here and I want to find a way out.
Out of Blue Marsh. Of my life. Of my house, of my family. I want a way out. And it looks like you want that, too.
I know this girl from my old job and she wanted out of her family, too, and so she married a guy when she was 17.
Don't worry, I'm not about to propose to you. But I also think that maybe we could find a way out early.
I can't handle senior year. I can't handle another day as Cinderella. I can't handle one more day of living like the j ~ A.S. King

You ask, 'How to live my life?' But with the question you are suffocating life itself, for life is spontaneity. ~ Mooji

The Ryan White Care Act provides money for community-based counseling centers. While that may sound noble and compassionate, we know from experience that "AIDS education" becomes a platform for the homosexual community to recruit adolescents and lure teens into a self-destructive sexual lifestyle. ~ Christine O'Donnell

Laughter with those that understand us is music for the soul.
A hug at the right moment and a kind shoulder to lean on,
Is the sprinkle of magic that keeps us walking towards hope. ~ Mimi Novic

Perhaps behind our occasional hostility toward the artist and writer there may be a slight tinge of jealousy. The man or woman who for the sake of family life, children, takes up work he does not like, disciplines himself, sacrifices some fantasy he had once, to travel or to paint, or even possibly to write, may feel toward the artist and writer a jealousy of his adventurous life. The artist and the writer have generally paid the full price for their independence and for the privilege of doing work they love, or for their artistic rebellions against standardized living or values. ~ Anais Nin

I believe that almost all our sorrows are moments of tension which we experience as a paralysis, because we no longer hear our estranged feelings living. Because we are alone with the strange thing that has entered into us; because for a moment everything familiar and customary has been taken from us; because we stand in the middle of a crossing where we cannot remain standing. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Infectious disease is one of the great tragedies of living things - the struggle for existence between two different forms of life... Incessantly, the pitiless war goes on, without quarter or armistice - a nationalism of species against species. ~ Hans Zinsser

Let us be alert to the season in which we are living. It is the season of the Blessed Hope, calling for us to cut our ties with the world and build ourselves on this One who will soon appear. He is our hope - a Blessed Hope enabling us to rise above our times and fix our gaze upon Him. ~ A.W. Tozer

Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth ... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will
namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. ~ M. Scott Peck

With each day, each hour and every moment of life, no matter how small, I realize that I have found a way of bringing me straight to the one person that I would give everything for ... to you. I am living in a dream, in a dream I don't want to awake from. ~ Sawm Rad

To this day when I inhale a light scent of Wrangler - its sweet sharpness - or the stronger, darker scent of Musk, I return to those hours and it ceases to be just cologne that I take in but the very scent of age, of youth at its most beautiful peak. It bears the memory of possibility, of unknown forests, unchartered territories, and a heart light and skipping, hell-bent as the captain of any of the three ships, determined at all costs to prevail to the new world. Turning back was no option. Whatever the gales, whatever the emaciation, whatever the casualty to self, onward I kept my course. My heart felt the magnetism of its own compass guiding me on - its direction constant and sure. There was no other way through. I feel it again as once it had been, before it was broken-in; its strength and resolute ardency. The years of solitude were nothing compared to what lay ahead. In sailing for the horizon that part of my life had been sealed up, a gentle eddy, a trough of gentle waves diminishing further, receding away. Whatever loneliness and
pain went with the years between the ages of 14 and 20, was closed, irretrievable - I was already cast in form and direction in a certain course.

When I open the little bottle of eau de toilette five hundred different days unfold within me, conversations so strained, breaking slowly, so painstakingly, to a comfortable place. A place so warm and inviting after the years of silence and introspect, of hiding.

A place ~ Wheston Chancellor Grove

The truth is that capitalism has not only multiplied population figures, but at the same time, improved the people's standard of living in an unprecedented way. Neither economic thinking nor historical experience suggests that any other social system could be as beneficial to the masses as capitalism. The results speak for themselves. The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: Si monumentum requires, circumspice. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

In the history of a soul's evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured. ~ Virchand Gandhi

We will not meet our maker inside a world that we have made..."

We cannot truly know ourselves without knowing the living Earth, for it is the ground of our being. The fire of the sun burns within our cells. The wind gives us life with each breath, and our blood reflects the chemical composition of the great oceans. Every molecule of our bodies has come from the natural world.

Nature is the visible face of the spirit, and our nature and spirit will only be found within, and not apart from her. ~ Sparrow Hart

So while the past is always implicit in the present, interpretation of the past varies with succeeding generations. The present meanings of the past evolve to reflect the concerns of each living generation. Thus although the meanings of specific events of the past may have had one set of meanings for the generation in the decades after the American Revolution, those same events may have very different meanings now. ~ Robert R. Archibald

It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.
This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...
I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. ~ Wendell Berry

Have you forgotten me?
by Nancy B. Brewer

The bricks I laid or the stitches I sewed.
I was the one that made the quilt; a drop of blood still shows from my needle prick.
Your wedding day in lace and satin, in a dress once worn by me.
I loaned your newborn baby my christening gown, a hint of lavender still preserved.

Do you know our cause, the battles we won and the battles we lost?
When our soldiers marched home did you shout hooray!
Or shed a tear for the fallen sons.

What of the fields we plowed, the cotton, the tobacco and the okra, too.
There was always room at my table for one more,
Fried chicken, apple pie, biscuits and sweet ice tea.

A time or two you may have heard our stories politely told.
Some of us are famous, recorded on the pages of history.
Still, most of us left this world without glory or acknowledgment.

We were the first to walk the streets you now call home,
Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left,
but did you hear me cry out to you?

Listen, my child, to the voices of your ancestors.
Take pride in our accomplishments; find your strength in our suffering.
For WE are not just voices in the wind, WE are a living part of YOU! ~ Nancy B. Brewer

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. ~ Chris Hedges

Then came the reflection, how little at any time could a father do for the wellbeing of his children! The fact of their being children implied their need of an all-powerful father: must there not then be such a father? Therewith the truth dawned upon him, that first of truths, which all his church-going and Bible-reading had hitherto failed to disclose, that, for life to be a good thing and worth living, a man must be the child of a perfect father, and know him. In his terrible perturbation about his children, he lifted up his heart - not to the Governor of the world; not to the God of Abraham or Moses; not in the least to the God of the Kirk; least of all to the God of the Shorter Catechism; but to the faithful creator and Father of David Barclay. The aching soul which none but a perfect father could have created capable of deploring its own fatherly imperfection, cried out to the father of fathers on behalf of his children, and as he cried, a peace came stealing over him such as he had never before felt. ~ George MacDonald

What we do for a living does not matter so much as how we do it. It is the spirit in which we do our work that counts, and that counts through all eternity. ~ Orison Swett Marden

She asked him to come in, if only for a minute, as it would seem so odd otherwise, and as if she had been out alone in the dark. He gave way, and followed her in. Immediately that the door was opened he found, in addition to her parents, several neighbours sitting round. They all spoke in a congratulatory manner, and took him seriously as Arabella's intended partner.
They did not belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place and embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of pleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet woman without features or character; and bidding them all good night plunged with a sense of relief into the track over the down.
But that sense was only temporary: Arabella reasserted her sway in his soul. He walked as if he felt himself to be another man from the Jude of yesterday. What were his books to him? what were his intentions, hitherto adhered to so strictly, as to not wasting a single minute of time day by day? 'Wasting!' It depended on your point of view to define that: he was just living for the first time: not wasting life. It was better to love a woman than to be a graduate, or a parson; ay, or a pope! ~ Thomas Hardy

Marriage is never static. There are peaks and troughs, cycles. It is easy to forget that this shifting landscape is really only ever a reflection of the self. Our capacity for attachment determines the kind of mate we attract, and it is through this mate that we are forever transformed – marriage as alchemy, but also as a mirror. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming.
I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright. I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.
You are a great woman and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. But if left with just the experience we've shared, I know my life was better because of it. ~ Emma Forrest

Sometimes, just the act of venting is helpful. Counseling provides a safe haven for precisely that kind of free-ranging release: You can say things in the therapist's office, with the therapist present, that would be incendiary or hurtful in your living room. ~ Laura Wasser

The very best antidote for the New Age teachings is for Christians to enter into and live fully in the supernatural. This is certainly no time to draw back from supernatural living and retreat into a mere defense of orthodoxy. Because we have adopted this stance for the last half-century, we have opened the door for the New Age to fill the vacuum. There is a longing in the human heart for communication and a relationship with the Divine. Since the dawn of history, when God's people do not preach, proclaim, and model the genuine article, men and women will wander into whatever appears to offer the fulfillment of their spiritual quest. We need to cast aside our hesitation and proceed strongly forward, the Word and the Spirit as our unfailing guide. ~ Mark Virkler

God is that force that drives us to really see each other and to really behold each other and care for each other and respond to each other. And for me, that is actually enough. That cultivating it, that thinking about it, worshipping it, working towards it, taking care of it, nurturing it in myself, nurturing it in other people, that really is a life's work right there, and it doesn't have to be any bigger than that. God doesn't have to be out in the next solar system over bashing asteroids together. It's plenty, just the God that I work with. Kate Braestrup ~ Krista Tippett

He wrote arguments for and against life; he began to think the slowest and most painful form of suicide was living, running the whole decathlon of suffering, no breather or bottled water. Fear of dying was irrational. Death was utilitarian. Decrease in net resource consumption and planetary suffering. Increase in net comedy. There was no afterlife but there was a right-before-death, and medical research said it was loopy and nice, all white lights and gentle voices. With booze it wasn't even scary. Some people with terrible lives didn't kill themselves, but that didn't mean they shouldn't. Most people weren't alive and didn't mind. You couldn't regret it. ~ Tony Tulathimutte

Nothing cuts a neural route faster through the brain then a pinch of pain. Periods of unhappiness penetrate and scar the brain. Experiencing intense periods of unpleasantness incites us to grow. If we can bunt the destructive forces of extreme pain and embrace its forceful impact for its educational value, experiencing profound pain causes us to appreciate the pleasure of simply living in the moment, enjoying each blade of grass in nature's glorious bouts of beauty. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster