Great Throughts Treasury

"Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth."

"Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside."

"Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness."

"Every word that judges value is circular. 'Good' is 'right' is 'proper' is 'just' is 'good'. But check the examples, and they're not circular at all: Everyone says 'makes me happy'."

"Every problem has a gift for you in its hands."

"Every real teacher is myself in disguise."

"Every step in every proud life is a run from safety to the dark, and the only thing to trust is what we think is true."

"Everything in this book may be wrong. [The Savior's Manual]"

"Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love."

"Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions."

"Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies."

"Fail at love, and the other tests don't matter."

"Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end."

"Everything you've said, everything you want to believe is already true. You may not find some of it for a while, and some of it might take longer than that, but that doesn't stop it from being true this minute!"

"For a moment, off balance, was I annoyed? Anger is always fear, I thought, and fear is always fear of loss. Would I lose myself if he made those choices? It took a second to settle down: I'd lose nothing. They'd be his wishes, not mine, and he's free to live as he wants. The loss would come if I dared force him, tried to live for him and me as well. There'd be disaster worse than life on a bar stool."

"For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight."

"Get this in mind early: We never grow up."

"Forget your enemies. It's your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems."

"He wanted so much to ask, and he dared so little to know."

"Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know."

"Good and evil are not what our parents told us, not what our church tells us, or our country, not what anybody tells us! All of us decide good and evil for ourselves, automatically, by choosing what we want to do!"

"Grief is no more necessary when we understand death than fear is necessary when we understand flying."

"Here's how the people live here, in big house-shaped boxes to keep off 'rain' and 'snow,' holes cut in the sides so they can see out. They move around in smaller boxes, painted different colors, with wheels on the corners. They need this box-culture because each person thinks of herself and himself as locked in a box called a 'body,' arms and legs, fingers to move pencils and tools, languages because they've forgotten how to communicate, eyes because they've forgotten how to see. Odd little planet. Wish you were here. Home soon."

"Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, in which there is no love."

"Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect."

"Humanity is not a gift of nature, it is a spiritual achievement to be earned."

"Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked, said they."

"I AM! YOU ARE! AND LOVE: IS ALL THAT MATTERS!"

"I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy."

"I don"

"I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service. [Often attributed, but not a Richard Bach quote]"

"I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?"

"I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard."

"I felt like a moth in a chandelier "

"If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim."

"I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me."

"I"

"If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"

"If we change in different directions, then we don't have any future anyway, do we? I think it's possible for two people to change together, to grow together and enrich instead of diminish each other. The sum of one and one, if they're the right ones, can be infinity! But so often one person drags the other down; one person wants to go up like a balloon and the other's a dead weight. I've always wondered what it would be like if both people, if a woman and a man both wanted to go up like balloons!"

"If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all."

"If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it."

"If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were. [Often attributed, but not a Richard Bach quote]"

"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats."

"Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't."

"In order to win, you must expect to win. [Often attributed, but not a Richard Bach quote]"

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem."

"In the path of our happiness shall we find the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime ...walk your own path, as you please."

"In spite of my study, I have learned. Every grand religion begins in light. Yet only hearts hold light. Pages cannot. I have paper in my hands. Give these words to the world and they will be loved and understood by those who already know their truth. The truth doesn't burn. The truth waits for anyone who wishes to find it"

"I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you."

"In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea."