Shelf Awareness Quotes

Here's the thing: the act of reading changes your life, sometimes in large ways, sometimes in small ways, but every book you read asks you to move outside of yourself and your own experience to consider the lives of others. So I can't identify a particular book that altered my life, but I do know that the act of reading has pushed me to engage more deeply with the world (real and imagined), and I'm grateful for that. ~ Ethan Rutherford

We both know you can't split a bookstore. (I don't even share shelf space.) ~ Mary Jane Hathaway

Life invariably provides every individual a cause to discover prudence amidst disquiet. ~ Mayank Sharma

Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile. ~ Robert Aris Willmott

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Everyone knows the experience of encountering other persons only under the aspect of how they intersect with our projects, and of noticing them only insofar as we have to notice them in order to interact with them as we pursue our goals. But from time to time we realize more keenly that the other with whom we are dealing is a person, and then we feel the irreverence and the arrogance of our attitude. We become aware of a certain violence with which we have been treating other persons; we realize that we have to draw back and grant them a space in which to be themselves as persons, and that we have to cease seeing them exclusively in relation to our projects. ~ John F. Crosby

This is my experience of Oprah Winfrey - she makes decisions as frequently as she can to contribute with consciousness, with awareness, with love. I know - this is the source of her joy, her vitality, her unending creativity and her connection to people. ~ Gary Zukav

She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek. ~ Ayn Rand

Live to learn to love.
Learn to love to live.
Love to live to learn
so that you may live the life that you yearn. ~ Rico Dasheem

When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. ~ Arthur Koestler

Through you
the world learns
to recognize itself
- as heaven. ~ Ivan M. Granger

I've carried on, in that same tradition, with my kids. Aside from just his brilliance, in my estimation, I think he had one of the great imaginations of the 20th century. One of the reasons why the tradition carries on, all these years later, is because, as a parent, those are the books that you go to and pull off the shelf because they never stop delighting you. ~ Christopher Meledandri

Awareness is seventy percent of the solution. ~ Irvine Welsh

How much modern civilization has lost, I think, when they lost the awareness of the billions of stars overhead. ~ Christopher Pike

The actions carried out with ignorance of the Self [agnan bhaav, ignorance intent] is all bondage. Every action done with the awareness of I am pure Soul [gnan bhaav, knowledge intent], will grant liberation. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process. ~ Michele Rosenthal

"The more we search for ourselves, the less likely we are to find ourselves; and the more we search for God, and to serve our fellow-men, the more profoundly will we become acquainted with ourselves, and the more inwardly assured. This is one of the great spiritual laws of life." (From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, February 18, 1954) ~ Shoghi Effendi

When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection. ~ Agnes Martin

I want to emphasize the fact that we all have the same experience and the same concern, but the artist must know exactly what the experience is. He must pursue the truth relentlessly. Once he sees this fact his feet are on the path. If you want to know the truth you will know it. The manipulation of materials in an artwork is a result of this state of mind. The artist works by awareness of his own state of mind. ~ Agnes Martin

God's beauty is better by far than anything that comes out of a jar.. ~ Nanette L. Avery

Then the screen comes on, showing a familiar menu on a blue background and I stare at it, transfixed, like a yokel who's never seen a television before. Because it's not a TV. It's a flat-screen PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition. They can't be that dumb. It's got to be a trap, I gibber to myself. Not even the clueless cannon-fodder-in-jumpsuits who staff any one of the movies on the shelf would be that dumb! ~ Charles Stross

My friend ... care for your psyche ... know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves -Socrates ~ Socrates

Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad. ~ Debbie Ford

The best way to maximize your time is by not wasting time. This requires planning and having an awareness of how you spend your time throughout the day. ~ Tasha Hoggatt

If she and her sister were two books in their father's study, Essie would be the one lying open on the desk, enticing you to read it. Roa would be the one stuffed between a dozen others, high up on the shelf. ~ Kristen Ciccarelli

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden? ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Different moves make different sounds - the steady tread of someone walking, the scrape of shifting feet, the patter of someone in a hurry - and with practice you can learn to filter them, picking out the ones that don't fit in. It's nothing to do with magic, just simple awareness, a primal skill that anyone can learn but which most people in the modern age have forgotten. But anyone who lives as a predator or a prey learns it fast. ~ Benedict Jacka

It is significant, I sometimes think, that the facets of nature which quicken my pulse with that awareness of both life and death are inextricably associated with the loneliness of man's mote-like existence in the cosmos―and acceptance of man's essential solitude on earth, or by love, or both together, for they are only different aspects of the same face. ~ August Derleth

Without the ability to think about yourself, to reflect on your life, there's really no awareness, no consciousness. Consciousness doesn't come automatically; it comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious. ~ Maxine Greene

I became totally absorbed into this forest existence. It was an unparalleled period when aloneness was a way of life; a perfect opportunity, it might seem, for meditating on the meaning of existence and my role in it all. But I was far too busy learning about the chimpanzees'lives to worry about the meaning of my own. I had gone to Gombe to accomplish a specific goal, not to pursue my early preoccupation with philosophy and religion. Nevertheless, those months at Gombe helped to shape the person I am today-I would have been insensitive indeed if the wonder and the endless fascination of my new world had not had a major impact on my thinking. All the time I was getting closer to animals and nature, and as a result, closer to myself and more and more in tune with the spiritual power that I felt all around. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can even describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected. The beauty was always there, but moments of true awareness were rare. They would come, unannounced; perhaps when I was watching the pale flush preceding dawn; or looking up through the rustling leaves of some giant forest tree into the greens and browns and the black shadows and the occasionally ensured bright fleck of blue sky; or when I stood, as darkness fell, with one hand on the still warm trun ~ Jane Goodall

I never use the word renunciation at all. I say: "Rejoice in life,in love,in meditation,in the beauties of the world, in the ecstasy of existence--rejoice in everything!" Transform the mundane into the sacred. Transform this shore ino the other shore, transform the earth into paradise.
And then indirectly a certain renunciation starts happening. But that happens,you don't do it. It is not a doing, it is a happening. ~ Osho

I love raising awareness and encouraging people to take action for World Environment Day, because it demonstrates how individual voices can become a global chorus for change. ~ Li Bingbing

Who am I? is the only question worth asking and the only one never answered. ~ Deepak Chopra

When you focus on just one thing at a time, without rushing or procrastinating, you cultivate a sense of timeless awareness that creates feelings of calm and well-being. ~ Deepak Chopra

It is not quite right to describe One Taste as a "consciousness" or an "awareness," because that's a little too heady, too cognitive. It's more like the simple Feeling of Being. You already feel this simple Feeling of Being: it is the simple, present feeling of existence. ~ Ken Wilber

I asked him if he thought "there" was better than "here." "Not better," he said. "I mean, my great-great-grandpap got his leg shot off. But I feel like it was bigger somehow." Hawkins flipped through pages of Civil War pictures. "At work, I mix dyes and put them in a machine. I'm thirty-six and I've spent almost half my life in Dye House No. 1. I make eight dollars sixty-one cents an hour, which is okay, 'cept everyone says the plant will close and go to China." He put the book back on the shelf. "I just feel like the South has been given a bum deal ever since that War. ~ Tony Horwitz

When we were first born, Spirit was our predominate guide, but as we 'matured,' our society quickly cured us of that.

I learned later in my studies that any negative moaning I have about my life is only an affirmation of weakness and makes all those around me not want to be there.

Life is nothing more than a dance with God; we just need to follow His lead and quit stepping on His toes.

We must be able to release the things we hold dearest in order to truly have.

I believe you must know the feeling of hunger before you can truly taste and enjoy food, you can only recognize authenticity by experiencing fraud, and you can only experience true love after enduring heartache. Your level of awareness will increase as you experience the rawness of life on your path to becoming more.

God never gives you more than you can handle. He is perfect in His teaching.

Know that what comes around goes around, and what you're unable to forgive and let go will stay around.

We need to control what we think, what we say, and how we feel. It's our thoughts that produce our words, and our words lead to our actions. Our actions over time become habits, which form our character. Our character is what unfolds into our reality.

Life is not about a future someone, it's about 'becoming' someone and enjoying every step along the way. There's no need to wait - significance is available right now.

If you had to ~ Doug Burnett

Hurry up, he'll be coming back pretty soon!"

Lynda spelled with a "y" Corgill, who was two years behind Dara, Mackenzie, and Jennifer, and had just completed her sophomore year, squeezed the hot glue gun into the door lock of the headmaster's office. Shelby Andrews, her accomplice and the newest resident to be accepted at Wood Rose, stood watch.

"I see the lights of the truck. Hurry! He's coming back! Are you finished?"

Lynda gave the metal apparatus one last squeeze, filling the lock with the quick-drying cement glue guaranteed to harden on contact. "Finished."

In the soft illumination of the crescent moon high overhead, the two girls, barefooted and wearing dark blue pajamas, ran across the lawn crisscrossed by dark, elongated shadows and dampened by night-cooled air to the maintenance shed where they placed the glue gun on the top shelf where it was normally kept. With their task completed, they quickly returned to the dormitory, to the far end from where Ms. Larkins slept, and crawled through the open window. Within minutes they were back in their rooms, in their individual beds, and sound asleep. The sleep of innocent angels.

It would soon be light; and Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women would start another day. ~ Barbara Casey

Light in love is joy.
Light in faith is hope.
Light in compassion is mercy.
Light in gratitude is contentment.

Light in understanding is awareness.
Light in intellect is discernment.
Light in certainty is conviction.
Light in patience is expectation.

Light in truth is discovery.
Light in innocence is virtue.
Light in experience is illumination.
Light in consciousness is realization.

Light in your world is warmth.
Light in your sky is energy.
Light in your universe is wisdom.
Light in your yourself is virtue.

Light in your mind is truth.
Light in your heart is knowledge.
Light in your soul is wisdom.
Light in your life is God. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo