Jonathan Livingston Seagull

by Richard Bach

But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.

“Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast.

For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly.

we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”

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

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”

Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too….”

whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.

the forces of rulers and ritual slowly, slowly will kill our freedom to live as we choose.