Michael Bee > Michael's Quotes

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions.”
― Hafiz

“The
Earth would die
If the sun stopped kissing her.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Khwāja Šams ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī, The Gift

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
― Hafiz of Shiraz

“For a day, just for one day,
Talk about that which disturbs no one
And bring some peace into your
Beautiful eyes.”
― شمس الدین محمد حافظ / Shams-al-Din Mohammad Hafez, The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems Inspired by Hafiz

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.”
― Robert Fulghum, True Love

“The lords themselves are responsible for making the poor people their enemy. They do not want to remove the cause of insurrection, so how, in the long run, can things improve?”
― Thomas Müntzer, Tratados y sermones

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“TORCH The human soul is but a part of a burning torch which God separated from Himself at Creation. WM-ST-67”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“SPRING In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn. SP-ST-57”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“NIGHTINGALE The nightingale does not make his nest in a cage lest slavery be the lot of its chicks. BW-ST-122”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“To be modest in speaking truth is hypocrisy. TM-ST-95”
― Kahlil Gibran

“MIMIC He who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass that is loaded with books. WM-ST-63”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“MADNESS Madness is the first step towards unselfishness. Be mad and tell us what is behind the veil of “sanity.” The purpose of life is to bring us closer to those secrets, and madness is the only means. SP-ST-62”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul. S”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“FLOWERS The flowers of the field are the children of sun’s affection and nature’s love; and the children of men are the flowers of love and compassion. BW-ST-122”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“Art is one step from the visibly known toward the unknown. MS-71”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“ACTION A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowled1ge that is idle. WM-ST-63”
― Kahlil Gibran, Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

“One should be always on the trail of one’s own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“We only know who we are by trying on various versions of ourselves.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“see yourself as the smallest of the small. Then you can make room for the whole world.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“human nature in general is revealed to each person through his own nature in particular.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“I think my dharma is to create a safe space for people.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“I think my dharma is to create a safe space for people. To create a safe container in which people can thrive and be themselves. To be a kind of home base for folks—especially those who have no other home base.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“The tortured clinging to an earlier expression of The Gift very often precedes the emergence of some new version. We’re aware of the dryness at the center, yes, but this aridity is usually not quite enough to propel us forward. We must first get just a whiff of the new. The surprising and intoxicating whiff of a new dharma is quite irresistible.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“good. In order to ignite the full ardency of dharma, The Gift must be put in the service of The Times.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“Dharma is born mysteriously out of the intersection between The Gift and The Times. Dharma is a response to the urgent—though often hidden—need of the moment. Each of us feels some aspect of the world’s suffering acutely. It tears at our hearts. Others don’t see it or don’t care. But we feel it. And we must pay attention. We must act. This little corner of the world is ours to transform. This little corner of the world is ours to save.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“Because this principle is so important, and because Arjuna is so very likely to lose his tenuous grasp on it, Krishna reminds him over and over again throughout their dialogue. “The disunited mind is far from wise,” he nudges. The mind “must overcome the confusion of duality.”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

“We derive the greatest pleasure and fulfillment when all our faculties are drawn together into our life’s work. In this state of absorption, we experience extraordinary satisfaction. We human beings are attracted to the experience of intense involvement. The outcome of this involvement, says Hokusai, is sublime. “By ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature.” Hokusai’s lesson, finally, is that a life of passion for dharma is a fulfilled”
― Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling