Browsing Quotes With Tag: truth (59)
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We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can’t have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we’re so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they’re not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. Maybe not out loud, if it’s going to get you into trouble: “I wish I’d never married him.” “I wish she was still alive.” “I wish I’d never had kids with her.” “I wish I had a whole shitload of money.” “I wish all the Albanians would go back to fucking Albania.” Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it’ll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you’re living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies just for one minute.
Speaker: Nick HornbyPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 9:00 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you?” I denied it of course. But then, anything – smashing up a new car, persuading Donald Rumsfeld to come to an Islington flat in the early hours of New Year’s Day – is easier than actually telling the truth. That look you get, the look which lets you see right through the eyes and down into the place where she keeps all the hurt and the rage and the loathing… Who wouldn’t go that extra yard to avoid it?
Speaker: Nick HornbyPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 8:54 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which hell affords.
Speaker: C.S. LewisPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 8:24 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 7:44 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Remember,” Khader said insistently, resting his hand on my forearm to emphasize his words. “Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong – that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.”
…Once before he’d tormented me with that phrase. I chewed at it, in my mind, as a bear will chew at a leather strap that binds it by the leg. In my life, the wrong things were almost always done for the wrong reasons. Even the right things that I did were too often goaded by the wrong reasons.Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 7:25 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until the dawn.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:09 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I said that the truth is found more often in music,” he repeated, “than it is in books of philosophy.”
“What is the truth?” I asked him. I didn’t really want to know. I was trying to hold up my end of the conversation. I was trying to be clever.
“The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,” he said. “It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.”Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:04 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“It is strange, at first, to think in the right way. But there are a few things we can know, a few things to be sure of, and it is relatively easy. Let me show you. To know the truth, all you have to do is close your eyes.”
“It’s that easy?” I laughed.
“Yes. All you have to do is close your eyes. We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.”Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:00 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Fate has every power over us, but two. Fate cannot control our free will, and fate cannot lie. Men lie, to themselves more than to others, and to others more often then they tell the truth. But fate does not lie.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:59 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Now we can understand what Jesus meant when he spoke about forgiveness, about love, about heaven. He said, “Let the children come with me because the ones who are like them can enter the kingdom of heaven.” When you are a child before you have knowledge, which means before you eat all of the lies, you live in heaven. When you fall, it is because you are innocent. And when you recover that paradise, you become like a child again, but with a big difference. Now you are no longer innocent; you are wise. This gives you immunity; you cannot fall again.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:39 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
If you follow these two rules – don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anybody else – all of the lies that come from the voice of knowledge won’t survive your skepticism. Being skeptical is not about being judgmental; it is not about taking the position that you are more intelligent than others. You just don’t believe, and what is true will become obvious. This is very interesting because the truth survives your skepticism even if you don’t believe it. That is the beauty of the truth. The truth doesn’t need anybody to believe it. The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same thing about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don’t believe in lies, they simply disappear.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:34 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
When people talk about you now you know they are talking about a secondary character in their story who represents you. They are talking about an image they create for you. You know that it has nothing to do with you. Nut if you agree, if you believe what they say, then their story becomes a part of your story. If you take it personally, it modifies your story. If you don’t take it personally, the opinions of others do not affect you the way they used to, and you have more patience with people.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:33 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Many times, we don’t see our own creation; we don’t see our own lies. But sometimes in the reflection of somebody else, we can see our own magnificence. By experiencing the love of another person, we can see how great we are. From one artist to another artist, we might see that it’s possible to improve our own art.
Once we have the awareness to see our own story, we discover there is another way of creating the main character. Without awareness, there is nothing we can do, because the story is so powerful that the story writes itself. We create the story, we give our personal power to the story, and then the story is living our lives. But with awareness, we recover the control of our story.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:32 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I believe that all humans have moments of inspiration when we perceive truth. These moments usually occur when the mind is quiet – when we perceive the force of life through our feelings. Of course, the voices inside our head that we call thinking will invalidate our experience almost right away. These voices will try to justify and deny what we feel. Why? Because when we witness the truth, all of the lies that we believe cannot survive. Humans are afraid of the truth, and when we say that we are afraid, the one who is speaking is the liar. Yes, because the lies that speak through that voice cannot survive the truth, and they don’t want to die.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:31 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
You know, most people around the world believe that there is a great conflict in the universe, a conflict between good and evil. Well, this is not true. It’s true that there is a conflict, but the conflict only exists in the human mind, not in the universe. It’s not true for the plants or the animals. It’s not true for the stars or the trees, or for the rest of nature. It’s only true for humans. And the conflict in the human mind is not really between good and evil. The real conflict in our mind is between the truth and what is not the truth, between the truth and lies. Good and evil are just the result of that conflict.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:30 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
From this point, it is easy to understand what is meant by original sin. The original sin is not sex. No, that is another lie. The original sin is to believe the lies that come from the snake in the tree, the fallen angel. The meaning of the word sin is “to go against.” Everything that we say, everything that we do against ourselves is sin. To sin is not about blame or moral condemnation. To sin is to believe in lies, and to use those lies against ourselves. From that first sin, that original lie, all of our other sins are born.
Speaker: Don Miguel RuizPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:29 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“My eyes, I cannot bear
What most I long to see;
And what I long to hear,
That most I dread.” OedipusSpeaker: SophoclesPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:26 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Show me the man whose happiness was anything more than illusion
Followed by disillusion.” ChorusSpeaker: SophoclesPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:26 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Speaker: Sir Arthur Conan DoylePosted: 08 May 2008 at 8:26 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment!