John Roche > John's Quotes

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  • #1
    M. Scott Peck
    “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult ―once we truly understand and accept it― then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
    M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

  • #2
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    “For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
    tags: love

  • #3
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    “I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
    to make every moment holy.
    I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
    just to lie before you like a thing,
    shrewd and secretive.
    I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
    as it goes toward action;
    and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,
    when something is coming near,
    I want to be with those who know secret things
    or else alone.
    I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
    and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
    to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
    I want to unfold.
    I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
    because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
    and I want my grasp of things to be
    true before you. I want to describe myself
    like a painting that I looked at
    closely for a long time,
    like a saying that I finally understood,
    like the pitcher I use every day,
    like the face of my mother,
    like a ship
    that carried me
    through the wildest storm of all.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

  • #4
    Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
    “Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I'll be mad.”
    Rumi

  • #5
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “Star friendship.— We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did—and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,—perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us! That we have to become estranged is the law above us: by the same token we should also become more venerable for each other! And thus the memory of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path,—let us rise up to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.— Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies.”
    Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

  • #6
    “I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
    Hafiz of Shiraz

  • #7
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  • #8
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    “Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet



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