Stephen Mitchell Quotes

Whatever thought grips the mind at the time of death is the one which will propel it and decide for it the nature of its future birth. Thus if one wants to attain god after death, one has to think of him steadfastly ... This is not as simple as it sounds, for at the time of death the mind automatically flies to the thought of an object (i.e. money, love) which has possessed it during its sojourn in the world. Thus one must think of god constantly. ~ Stephen Mitchell

I am speechless: what can I answer?
I put hand on my mouth.
I have said too much already;
now I will speak no more. ~ Stephen Mitchell

...so profound an insight into God that for a century and a half he was branded a dangerous atheist... ~ Stephen Mitchell

They say you can fool some of the people all of the time. Accordingly, I think we should concentrate on this group initially. We can move on to the people you can only fool some of the time at a later date if we deem it necessary. ~ Stephen Mitchell

So actions themselves are not good and not bad; only the intention is important. ~ Stephen Mitchell

When he makes you a promise, he is assuring you that however the world changes, his word will not change. Thus, he is creating the future inside the present. Even more: he is creating the present inside the present. He is establishing on stationary point amid the infinite flux of events. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself. ~ Stephen Mitchell

It is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do an others; when you do your duty, you are naturally free from sin. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. That is the best way for a man to live. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Creativity, not normality, has become the paradigm of mental health. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Love softens everything except our sense of integrity. ~ Stephen Mitchell

When speech comes from a quiet heart, it has the strength of the orchid, and the fragrance of rock. ~ Stephen Mitchell

But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance. ~ Stephen Mitchell

The change of language is a change in reality. ~ Stephen Mitchell

What may appear to be proud ungrateful and headstrong fron the outside may from the inside express an unshakable integrity of character. Pride, if it doesn't step over the line into arrogance, is simply an unprejudiced self-esteem. Ingratitude is the appropriate response to a kindness that has hooks on it. Headstrong is another word for trusting your own heart. ~ Stephen Mitchell

There are two kinds of women: those who marry princes and those who marry frogs. The frogs never become princes, but it is an acknowledged fact that a prince may very well, in the course of an ordinary marrige, gradually, at first almost imperceptibly, turn into a frog. Happy the woman who after twenty-five years still wakes up beside the prince she fell in love with. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Hmm,' said the King. 'I must write that down in my book of aphorisms. I don't know if it is deep, but it sounds deep. ~ Stephen Mitchell

He who has let go of hatred
who treats all beings with kindness
and compassion, who is always serene,
unmoved by pain or pleasure,
free of the "I" and "mine,"
self-controlled, firm and patient,
his whole mind focused on me
that is the man I love best. ~ Anonymous

We liken the passion of the beginning to adolescent intoxication - both transient and unrealistic. The consolation for giving it up is the security that waits on the other side. Yet when we trade passion for stability, are we not merely swapping one fantasy for another? As Stephen Mitchell points out, the fantasy of permanence may trump the fantasy of passion, but both are products of our imagination. ~ Esther Perel

The audience will remember what it didn't expect to see. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Children understand that 'once upon a time' refers not only
not even primarily
to the past, but to the impalpable regions of the present, the deeper places inside us where princes and dragons, wizards and talking birds, impassable roads, impossible tasks, and happy endings have always existed, alive and bursting with psychic power. ~ Stephen Mitchell

[Jesus] teaches that just as the sun gives light to both wicked and good, and the rain brings nourishment to righteous and unrighteous, God's compassion embraces all people. There are no pre-conditions for it, nothing we need to do first, nothing we have to believe. When we are ready to receive it, it is already there. And the more we live in its presence, the more effortlessly if flows through us, until we find that we no longer need external rules or Bibles or Messiahs. ~ Stephen Mitchell

When there's no way out, you just follow the way in front of you. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Education is no longer thought of as a preparation for adult life, but as a continuing process of growth and development from birth until death. ~ Stephen Mitchell

The man who sees me in everything
and everything within me
will not be lost to me, nor
will I ever be lost to him.
He who is rooted in oneness
realizes that I am
in every being; wherever
he goes, he remains in me.
When he sees all being as equal
in suffering or in joy
because they are like himself,
that man has grown perfect in yoga. ~ Anonymous

In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes. They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Even the purest of teachers will face bitter criticism from those who feel threatened by him. ~ Stephen Mitchell

What people love about life is its miraculous beauty; what they hate about death is the loss and decay around it. Yet losing is not losing, and decay turns into beauty, as beauty turns back into decay. We are breathed in, breathed out. Therefore all you need is to understand the one breath that makes up the world. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Wishes are like magnifying glasses they enlarge and focus an intention that is already inside us. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped. ~ Stephen King

Love is the most pernicious drug of all. Let the romantics debate its existence. Pragmatists accept it and use it. ~ Stephen King

Determine to become one of the best. Sufficient money will almost automatically follow if you get to be one of the 'best' in your chosen field, whatever it is. ~ Donald G. Mitchell

Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world's population. ~ Stephen Hawking

They walked back into the world together, wearing the gift that had been given them: just life. Pity was not love, Barbie reflected ... but if you were a child, giving clothes to someone who was naked had to be a step in the right direction. ~ Stephen King

Now, if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe. ~ Stephen Hawking

Poor England. Too much history for its acreage. Years grow inwards here, like my toenails. ~ David Mitchell

A Muzak version of 'Imagine' comes on and John Lennon wakes up in his tomb, appalled. ~ David Mitchell

Genius is a capacity for taking trouble. ~ Leslie Stephen

I have put [the word] "discoveries" in inverted commas because scientific results, perhaps as much at least as artistic achievements, are a product of contemporary taste, driven by momentary appetites rather than eternal verities. ~ Stephen Bayley

I just don't understand how you can not be concerned about your appearance. From time to time I'm vilified as the person who cares about the look of a teapot - and it's not that I believe my taste is superior, I just can not believe that other people don't care. ~ Stephen Bayley

Beware of asking people to question what's real and what isn't. They may reach conclusions you didn't see coming. ~ David Mitchell

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize. ~ Stephen Covey

I like working with kids. I just have a way with kids. ~ Stephen Baker

Hank Peters woke up in the early hours of the next morning from a dream of huge rats crawling out of an open grave, a grave which held the green and rotting body of Hubie Marsten, with a frayed length of manila hemp around his neck. Peters lay propped on his elbows, breathing heavily, naked torso slicked with sweat, and when his wife touched his arm he screamed aloud. EIGHT ~ Stephen King

Except that my father got a raise, and my mother didn't because she doesn't get paid for housework, and my sister stopped reading those self-esteem books because she met a new boy ~ Stephen Chbosky

We waste time, so you don't have to. ~ Stephen Hawking

They were the eyes of a happy woman, a woman around whom storms might blow without ever ruffling the serene core of her being. ~ Margaret Mitchell

True, I only properly started talking with Todd half an hour ago, but every instance of undying love was only half an hour young, once upon a time. ~ David Mitchell

So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners? ~ David Mitchell

When a manic-depressive personality begins to slide deeply into a depressive period, he had written, one symptom he or she may exhibit is acts of self-punishment: slapping, punching, pinching, burning one's self w/ cigarette butts, ~ Stephen King

When I knew I was going to be able to write full time, I wondered, "What's going to happen to the relationships within my family?" Are they going to change? Is it going to be the kind of deal where you say, "I can't take this! Get me out of here! I can't stand these screaming kids!" The way it turned out was, I was able to change the diapers okay, after I stuck the pin through my fingers a few times. I had a dawning realization that children are not particularly hard to deal with. ~ Stephen King

My father, " she said, pronouncing it fadder, and Beverly saw that her dress had also changed. It had become a scabrous, peeling black. The cameo was a skull, its jaw hung in a diseased gape. "His name was Robert Gray, better known as Bob Gray, better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Although that was not his name, either. But he did love his joke, my fadder. ~ Stephen King

Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ~ Stephen King

City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself. ~ Stephen King

The subterranean lair of the wily human relationship: a dark maze of pop-up demons, fun house mirrors, spooky dead ends, multiple false bottoms. ~ Stephen Wright

I did 'Gangs of New York' with Martin Scorsese, and they used to call me 'Little Joe Pesci' on the set. ~ Stephen Graham

A man's mouth gets him in more trouble than his pecker ever could, most of the time. ~ Stephen King

Step Up doesn't have to hide anything. These are actually moves that people do. It just so happens that dancers are superheroes. People think there is a lot of wire work or camera tricks, but that's just not the case. ~ Stephen Boss

Some magic is normality you're not yet used to. ~ David Mitchell

Let there be no innovation; keep to what has been handed down. ~ Pope Stephen I

They'll crucify you for staying the same, and they'll crucify you for change. I'd rather be crucified for changing. ~ Joni Mitchell

It's amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are. ~ Stephen Covey

American Eagle clothing is stylish, flattering and all about embracing your individuality. ~ Shay Mitchell

Oy opened his eyes - they were bright in the darkness - then winked at Jake. After that, he appeared to go back to sleep. Jake ~ Stephen King

Look out, world, I'm smokin' TNT and I'm drinkin' dynamite, so ~ Stephen King

I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book
everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside. (from Parade Magazine interview, 5/26/13) ~ Stephen King

Lover, she whispers, and closes her eyes.
It falls upon her.
Love is like dying. ~ Stephen King

Another example of their hatefulness while my dander's up: in order to get themselves off the hook of sometimes liking uncool things, they refer to them as 'guilty pleasures', which is a ridiculous expression. What? So you like Abba, or Roger Moore as James Bond, but have been led to believe that this taste is somehow infra dig, so you style it a 'guilty pleasure', thus demonstrating you're sufficiently relaxed and self-deprecating to own up to it – when in fact the way you have chosen to express it lays bare your bland and inane obsession with the worthless trappings of the zeitgeist.
'Guilty pleasures'? It's prudish and judgemental and yet it's referring to harmless things people do in their spare time. I mean, I've watched and enjoyed The X Factor and I know that it's not exactly the Proms or The Wire or whatever worthy thing I'm supposed to be watching, but why should I feel the least bit guilty about having taken pleasure from it? Or, for that matter, from eating a Findus crispy pancake, watching a Brittas Empire DVD or reading Country Life in the bath? ~ David Mitchell

...In a way, though, I'm almost relieved.'
'Relieved? Why?'
'Because I thought he was going to tell us that he killed her himself. For his damned Tower.'
Susannah looked squarely into his eyes. 'But he thinks that's what he did. Don't you understand that? ~ Stephen King

The problem here is that you think love will take all the pain away, like it does for characters in a book. It's not that easy, Stephen, and not that simple; despite all your bards and how much we'd like that to be true. It isn't. Love isn't going to fix me, or you. It's not a laxative that just helps you shit out all the crap you'd rather forget. ~ Brandon Shire

No community is easier to govern than one that rejects the very concept of community. ~ Stephen King

Apparently we need snakes. They don't just hiss, bite and hamper maverick archaeologists. They're ~ David Mitchell