Christy Porter > Christy's Quotes

“When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness

“The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness

“When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“Whilst in the process of losing all his money, Cardano noticed that his opponent had marked the cards. Whereupon he leapt up, slashed his opponent across the face with his dagger and grabbed the money. Outwitting his host's spear-wielding servants, he fled into the night-shrouded maze of the streets, eventually falling into a canal. [Footnote: It is interesting to note that Cardano may well have been rector of the University of Padua at the time.]”
― Paul Strathern, The Venetians

“My Chief Rabbit has told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here. --Bigwig”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“The only possible explanation for the absence of a proactive word to express nonviolence is that not only the political establishments but the cultural and intellectual establishments of all societies have viewed nonviolence as a marginal point of view, a fanciful rejection of one of society's key components, a repudiation of something important but not a serious force in itself. It is not an authentic concept but simply the abnegation of something else. It has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous.”
― Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea

“In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. 'Time' for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.”
― Roman Payne

“   To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind;    All are not fit with them to stir and toil,    Nor is it discontent to keep the mind    Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil    In one hot throng, where we become the spoil    Of our infection, till too late and long    We may deplore and struggle with the coil,    In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.”
― Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage