Joy > Joy's Quotes

“You were born into a state of grace. It is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace whether or not special words are spoken for you, or water or oil is poured upon your head. You share this blessing with the animals and all other living things. You cannot fall out of grace, nor can it be taken from you. You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive you own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted.”
― Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality: Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know

“Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. That is its purpose.”
― Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
— Churchill's response”
― George Bernard Shaw

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]”
― James Madison