Open Hearted Quotes

I've always been really opinionated, and mixed with being really open hearted, open to people shifting what I think all the time, but I like to speak with conviction. ~ Alanis Morissette

His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and his longings, always enthusiastic. He was delighted by things of an improbable or impractical nature, which he sought out with the open-hearted gladness of a child at play. When he spoke, he did so originally, and with an idealistic agony that was enough to make all but the most rigid of his critics smile; when he was silent, one had the sense, watching him, that his imagination was nevertheless usefully occupied, for he often sighed, or nodded, as though in agreement with an interlocutor whom no one else could see. ~ Eleanor Catton

Lucy was easy to trust. She was all heart. ~ Colleen Coble

I want to be present and really in my body, grounded and open minded and open hearted, no matter what the conflict or the crisis is. And if I am numbing myself with food and with alcohol, I can't then know that my emotional response is going to be authentic, is going to be in truth. My guess is that it is going to be reactive. ~ Seane Corn

Life is not a competition. No one has to lose for someone else to win. A true blessing blesses everyone. A fragmented love which makes others lose will eventually turn upon itself and destroy the very thing which was being so carefully guarded. An open-hearted love will follow a course which can only lead somewhere good. ~ Donna Goddard

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ~ John Lennon

We're trying, despite having done research and having obviously preconceived ideas, we try our best to be as open-hearted as possible, and try to create context. So that's always going to be the challenge, making a program like 'Gaycation', and we are always thinking about it, reflecting on it, and doing our best to show the whole picture as much as possible in a 45-minute span. Hopefully that comes across. ~ Ellen Page

There's also a way that you have of being precise but also allusive, that works well for me - it's something about the open-hearted way you frame your queries. Instead of feeling daunted or discouraged, I feel excited to give whatever it is a try. This takes a lot of editorial wisdom and confidence - to know just how to get the writer to take that extra chance. ~ George Saunders

When we pray and meditate sincerely and soulfully, we receive an open-hearted invitation from heaven. ~ Sri Chinmoy

Attention: deep listening. People are dying in spirit for lack of it. In academic culture, most listening is critical listening. We tend to pay attention only long enough to develop a counterargument; we critique the student's or the colleague's ideas; we mentally grade and pigeonhole each other. In society at large, people often listen with an agenda, to sell or petition or seduce. Seldom is there a deep, open-hearted nonjudgmental reception of the other. And so we all talk louder and more stridently and with a terrible desperation. By contrast, if someone truly listens to me, my spirit begins to expand. ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

A Permeable Life is about what presses out from the heart, what comes in at a slant and what shimmers below the surface of things. To live permeably is to be open-hearted and audacious, to risk showing up as our truest self, and embracing a willingness to be astonished. ~ Carrie Newcomer

In truly effective thinking the prime necessity is to liquidate judgments, regain an innocent eye, disentangle feelings, be curious and open-hearted. ~ Walter Lippmann

None of the ginkgo's aesthetic qualities are all that different from those of other trees. I could just as easily wax poetic about the beauty of beech trees, or the majesty of ancient sugar pines. But I think that ginkgos are just unusual enough for the occasional human to take notice of them. It's not that any particular tree or breed of dog or varietal or rose is objectively superior to its peers, they just happen to be the creatures that momentarily capture our flickering attention. As soon as humans take open-hearted notice of anything in the natural world, we find reason to love it. ~ Nathanael Johnson

A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them. ~ Walter Scott

USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM JUDGMENT One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift - a Trojan horse - will serve the same purpose. ~ Robert Greene

Don't feel undeserving for the success you've worked for. Don't sabotage your own progress in fear that you can't live up to how awesome you really are. Wear your blessing proudly and pass your goodness on to everyone you meet. It will be the open hearted and the joyful minds that recognize your loving spirit and dedication. ~ Ron Baratono

No country was ever easier to spy on, Tom, no nation so open-hearted with its secrets, so quick to air them, confide them, or consign them too early to the junk heap of planned American obsolescence. I am too young to know whether there was a time when Americans were able to restrain their admirable passion to communicate, but I doubt it. Certainly the path has been downhill since 1945, for it was quickly apparent that information which ten years ago would have cost Axl's service thousands of dollars in precious hard currency could by the mid-70s be had for a few coppers from the Washington Post. We could have resented this sometimes, if we had smaller natures, for there are few things more vexing in the spy world than landing a scoop for Prague and London one week, only to read the same material in Aviation Weekly the next. But we did not complain. In the great fruit garden of American technology, there were pickings enough for everyone and none of us need ever want for anything again. ~ John Le Carre

Christmas and the holidays are the season of giving. It's a time when people are more kind and open-hearted. ~ Gisele Bundchen

It seemed so good when it started.
I gave my trust to you.
I came to you open-hearted,
Hoping it was true.
Now I've gotten smart.
Now I've learned some things.
Now I know that what once was a start,
Is just an ending.
The longest good-bye
I ever knew,
The longest good-bye
Was the day
I said hello to you. ~ Heather Lynn Rigaud

There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational, unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than good to them, by interference." "Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others," rejoined Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. "But, my dear, pray do not make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one's family circle grievously. ~ Jane Austen

Caring is open-hearted, keeping us available to transmit love to a stranger through simple eye contact and without condition. This is not the opportunistic sizing-up of sexual cruising; instead, it's the felt recognition of the divinity and humanity in another individual. ~ Alexandra Katehakis

Nakedness is very common in the tribe. It is not a shameful thing; it is an expression of one's relationship with the spirit of nature. To be naked is to be open-hearted. Normally kids stay naked until puberty and even beyond. It was only with the introduction of cheap cloth from the West, through Goodwill and other Christian organisations, that nakedness began to be associated with shame. ~ Malidoma Patrice Some

Mr Elliot was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. ~ Jane Austen

And what did I see? I saw people who are elegant, open-hearted, intelligent; I saw an elder statesman who was kind and attentive to a boy like me; I saw people who are capable of understanding and forgiving, good-natured Russian people, almost as good-natured and warm-hearted as those whom I met back there, almost as good as them. So you may imagine how happily I was surprised! Oh, permit me to say this! I had heard a great deal and was very much of the conviction that in society all is style, all is decrepit formality, while the essence has dried up; but I mean, now I can see for myself that it cannot be so in our country; it may be like that in other countries, but not in ours. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Truth will always reassert itself, given a symbolic three days. Three days represents the time it takes between the crucifixion and the resurrection, between an open-hearted response to hurt and the experience of rebirth that will always follow. ~ Marianne Williamson

All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty. ~ Neil Peart

Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open- hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand. ~ Sue Thoele

Kindness is the best key to open the locked door of every heart. ~ Debasish Mridha

Chance was to work in the garden, where he would care for plants and grasses and trees which grew there peacefully. He would be as one on them: quiet, open hearted in the sunshine and heavy when it rained. ~ Jerzy Kosinski

Because I am still learning to walk and talk, and it is a million times easier to be cynical and wield a sword, than it is to be open-hearted and stand there, holding a balloon and a birthday cake, with the infinite potential to look foolish. ~ Caitlin Moran

Adults envy the open-hearted and open-minded explorations of children; seeing their joy and curiosity, we pine for our own capacity for wide-eyed wonder. ~ Gabor Mate

Aubade"

Who lives where summer
ends knows the hard cold of

autumn is blissfully
close, although it feels
each season newly un-

known. You are constantly
newly unknown to me,
my night-glowing open-hearted

sting-of-salt weather.
Rains and winds, sleights-of-
hand. Who if not you

could weigh me enough
down. You'd paint my eyes
blacker and warmer than they are

and soon they would carry
whole calendars of
black night in them.

You say you're pulled back,
but it is a rare thing inside those

shocks of minutes that
holds without our even
needing to touch it.

Maybe you think you trade
one clean joy for

another. But mine is darker,
slanted, nitrous blue at the root,

an acrostic of what is
most free and
far. To be another

person than the one
you were before means
more than I understand.

But my gradual hands
move in streams
over you whether you travel or not,

as you drop into sleep or not,
and in the book of this
most-alone-place I am

there only when you feel
need, a coat so thin and so like

skin you can touch the
slopes, the smoother

pools, dust-mooded
winds over roads, the skeleton
instrument of your voi ~ Joanna Klink

A traditionalist can sometimes be looked at as someone who is a fundamentalist, or they can be looked at as someone with a very strict set of understandings of human nature. But a traditionalist in the Vedic tradition, is one who is open-hearted, who does not judge, there's nothing to judge whatsoever, who understands the basic understanding and karma of all of it, and who basically helps when help is called for. ~ Maya Tiwari

We are quite open, however, to looking at acquisitions and there are opportunities that we periodically consider. and I think that may be something we do in the future, but I must say that there is no commitment to that at the present time in any form or size. ~ David Milne

He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted. ~ Neil Gaiman

Your pain was always a part of a plan to open your heart to love. ~ Bryant McGill

There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there. ~ Mary Karr

Never like anybody you can't trust, Cruz said. You might think you're a smart boy, you can like somebody and still keep your eyes open. But there's something about liking that dismays your attention, I don't know what it is. You allow yourself to like somebody you don't trust, and one night soon enough, you'll wake up to find an ax cleaved in the back of your skull, and you'll have your own foolish liking to thank for it. ~ Takashi Matsuoka

Don't take that tone with me, Gideon. I'm tired of being an open book for you while you hoard all your secrets. ~ Sylvia Day

Las Vegas suggests that the thirst for places, for cities and gardens and wilderness, is unslaked, that people will still seek out the experience of wandering about in the open air to examine the architecture, the spectacles, and the stuff for sale, will still hanker after surprises and strangers. That the city as a whole is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places in the world suggests something of the problems to be faced, but that its attraction is a pedestrian oasis suggests the possibility of recovering the spaces in which walking is viable. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Einstein does not remain attached to the classical principles, and when presented with a problem in physics he quickly envisages all of its possibilities. This leads immediately in his mind to the prediction of new phenomena which may one day be verified by experiment. ~ Henri Poincare

When I was a teenager, I used to go about barefoot with no hat and sunglasses, just open to the Sun. I used to bless and give thanks for my water then too. I'm returning to those practices. I feel it too, I'm not only doing it. Back then, it was not so conscious, I just did it. I've sometimes thought that I knew more at age 15 than I do now. ~ Sienna McQuillen

When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. ~ Sylvia Plath

Most intellectuals and most artists belong to the same type. Only the strongest of them force their way through the atmosphere of the bourgeois earth and attain to the cosmic. The others all resign themselves or make compromises. Despising the bourgeoisie, and yet belonging to it, they add to its strength and glory; for in the last resort they have to share their beliefs in order to live. The lives of these infinitely numerous persons make no claim to the tragic; but they live under an evil star in a quite considerable affliction; and in this hell their talents ripen and bear fruit. The few who break free seek their reward in the unconditioned and go down in splendor. They wear the thorn crown and their number is small. The others, however, who remain in the fold and from whose talents the bourgeoisie reaps much gain, have a third kingdom left open to them, an imaginary and yet a sovereign world, humor. The lone wolves who know no peace, these victims of unceasing pain to whom the urge for tragedy has been denied and who can never break through the starry space,who feel themselves summoned thither and yet cannot survive in its atmosphere - for them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits tough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and an escape into humor. Humor has always something bourgeois in it, although the true bourgeois is incapable of understanding it. In its imaginary realm the intricate and manyfaceted ideal of all Steppenwolves finds its realisa ~ Hermann Hesse

On the other hand, she was a women with a million happy memories, who knew what it was like to experience true love and who was ready to experience more life, more love and make new memories. Whether it happened in ten months or ten years, Holly would obey Gerry's final message. Whatever lay ahead, she knew she would open her heart and follow where it led.
In the meantime, she would just live. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm ridiculous in my oversharing; my mom and sister are very open but a little more judicious than me ... and my father is a decidedly private person. ~ Lena Dunham

In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same
Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence. ~ Stephen Levine

I began my life as I shall no doubt end it: among books. In my grandfather's study, they were everywhere; it was forbidden to dust them except once a year, before the October term. Even before I could read, I already revered these raised stones; upright or leaning, wedged together like bricks on the library shelves or nobly placed like avenues of dolmens, I felt that our family prosperity depended on them. They were all alike, and I was romping about in a tiny sanctuary, surrounded by squat, ancient monuments which had witnessed my birth, which would witness my death and whose permanence guaranteed me a future as calm as my past. I used to touch them in secret to honour my hands with their dust but I did not have much idea what to do with them and each day I was present at ceremonies whose meaning escaped me: my grandfather - so clumy, normally, that my grandmother buttoned his gloves for him - handled these cultural objects with the dexterity of an officiating priest. Hundreds of times I saw him get up absent-mindedly, walk round the table, cross the room in two strides, unhesitatingly pick out a volume without allowing himself time for choice, run through it as he went back to his armchair, with a combined movement of his thumb and right forefinger, and, almost before he sat down, open it with a flick "at the right page," making it creak like a shoe. I sometimes got close enough to observe these boxes which opened like oysters and I discovered the nakedness of their interna ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Louis found me in the rear parlor, the one more distant from the noises of the tourists in the Rue Royale, and with its windows open to the courtyard below. I was in fact looking out the window, looking for the cat again, though I didn't tell myself so, and observing how our bougainvillea had all but covered the high walls that enclosed us and kept us safe from the rest of the world. The wisteria was also fierce in its growth, even reaching out from the brick walls to the railing of the rear balcony and finding its way up to the roof.
I could never quite take for granted the lush flowers of New Orleans.
Indeed, they filled me with happiness whenever I stopped to really look at them and surrender to their fragrance, as though I still had the right to do so, as though I still were part of nature, as though I were still a mortal man. ~ Anne Rice

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking. ~ John Berryman

Everything opens a new door, a book opens a new door, facts open a new door. So choose your favourite thing and I promise it will open a door. ~ Deyth Banger

My plans were vague. I talked liberty to many of my friends and, you know how it is, when one talks liberty everything seems beautifully simple. One expects all gates to open and all walls to fall flat and all voices to shout for joy. ~ Robert Graves

The straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe ... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way.
River: Also, I can kill you with my brain. ~ Ben Edlund

Although the tech industry is very open to change, many people still have a closed-off mentality where, in the interest of protecting their ideas, they keep them hidden in dark caves. ~ Ryan Holmes

She thinks: A gift is a gift; you don't get to choose, whether it be a secret kept, a polite falsehood, a book you've already read, or a sweater that does not fit. You open it, you open your mind, you do not think about how you might use it or whether indeed it is any use to you. You understand that the giver is giving you what she can, that she is doing her best.
You say thank you. ~ Carrie Snyder

The key to writing is something to be stolen. How else does one open the door to a house of thieves? ~ Anthony Marais

When the doors are open big gusts of cold air sweep into the car, and suddenly it smells damp and earthly, that early smell that tells you all the snow and ice is melting and someday the sun will come out again.

And maybe it will, for some other girl. ~ Amanda Maciel

In front of the law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to the door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can't let him in to the law right now. The man thinks about this, and then he asks if he'll be able to go in later on. "That's possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not now". The gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the doorkeeper has stepped to one side, so the man bends over to try and see in. When the doorkeeper notices this he laughs and says, "If you're tempted give it a try, try and go in even though I say you can't. Careful though: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowliest of all the doormen. But there's a doorkeeper for each of the rooms and each of them is more powerful than the last. It's more than I can stand just to look at the third one. ~ Franz Kafka

If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves, said the modern Christ.
But none of us could bear to pass through the tunnel which led from the house into the world on the other side of the walls, where there were leaves on the trees, where water ran beside the paths, where there was daylight and joy. We could not believe that the tunnel would open on daylight: we feared to be trapped into darkness again; we feared to return whence we had come, from darkness and night. The tunnel would narrow and taper
down as we walked; it would close around us, and close tighter and tighter around us and stifle us. It would grow heavy and narrow and suffocate us as we walked. ~ Anais Nin

Looking back on my 50-year eclectic journey in research, I am grateful that it has gone as well as it has, although still not clever enough to open the black box of enzyme structure. ~ Irwin Rose

I find as long as I acknowledge the truth of something, then that's it. I know what it is and then I can operate. But if I overestimate the downside of something or the challenge of something and I get too obsessed about the difficulty of it, then I don't leave enough room to be open to the upside, the possibility. ~ Michael J. Fox

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

As she lifted her own backpack over the side of the black, heavy-duty dodge pickup, Owen took it out of her hands and set it beside the one-man tent and sleeping bag the FBI had provided for him.
"I could have done that," she said.
"Sure you could. But my daddy taught me a gentleman always helps a lady."
Bay was so startled at what he'd said, and the chagrined way he's said it, that she laughed. "Oh, my god. Chauvinism is alive and well - "
"We call it chivalry, or Southern courtesy, ma'am," he said. She realized he was heading around the truck to open the door for her.
She stepped in front of him and said, "It's going to be a long trip if you refuse to let me pull my weight. I can get my own door, Mr. Blackthorne."
For a minute, she thought he was going to make an issue of it. Then he touched the brim of his hat, shot her a rakish grin that turned her insides to mush, and said, "Whatever you say, Mizz Creed."
She was so flustered, she took a half step backward, slid into the seat when he opened the door for her after all, and said, "My friends call me Bay."
Bay flushed as she realized what she'd said. As he came around the hood and got in, she said, "That is - I mean - you know what I mean!"
He belted himself into the driver's seat and started the engine, before he turned to her and said, "My friends call me Owe. You can call me Owen."
She stared at him disbelief. "Oh. You. Blackthorne, you. ~ Joan Johnston

When one speaks of religion influencing public policy, the immediate question is, Whose religion? If one subscribes to the notion that this is in some sense a Christian society, then the question becomes, Whose Christianity? Without some basic agreement religiously, the entrance of religion into the public arena would seem to be a formula for open-ended conflict and possible anarchy.

Yet, in the absence of a public ethic, we arrive at that point where, in Alisdair MacIntyre's arresting phrase, "politics becomes civil war carried on by other means." MacIntyre believes that we have already reached that point, and he may be right. A major problem, however, is that a public ethic cannot be reestablished unless it is informed by religiously grounded values. . . .

It is important to note that, unlike Rousseau, for example, the founders thought the conventional religions could manage this role of ancillary reinforcement. They did not think it necessary to construct a new "civil religion" for the maintenance of republican virtue. ~ Richard John Neuhaus

When I first went to preach the word abroad, the doctors and priests of the country did open wide against me. But I was persuaded of this, not to render railing for railing; but to see how many of their carnal professors I could convince of their miserable state by the law, and of the want and worth of Christ: for, thought I, This shall answer for me in time to come, when they shall be for my hire before their face. Gen. xxx. 33. ~ John Bunyan

Long shots do come in and hard work, dedication and perseverance will overcome almost any prejudice and open almost any door. ~ John H. Johnson

In retrospect, the word "remote control" was ultimately a misnomer. What it finally did was to empower the more impulsive circuits of the brain in their conflict with the executive faculties, the parts with which we think we control ourselves and act rationally. It did this by making it almost effortless, practically nonvolitional, to redirect our attention - the brain had only to send one simple command to the finger in response to a cascade of involuntary cues. In fact, in the course of sustained channel surfing, the voluntary aspect of attention control may disappear entirely. The channel surfer is then in a mental state not unlike that of a newborn or a reptile. Having thus surrendered, the mind is simply jumping about and following whatever grabs it.

All this leads to a highly counterintuitive point: technologies designed to increase our control over our attention will sometimes have the very opposite effect. They open us up to a stream of instinctive selections, and tiny rewards, the sum of which may be no reward at all. And despite the complaints of the advertising industry, a state of distracted wandering was not really a bad one for the attention merchants; it was far better than being ignored. ~ Tim Wu