OLS Favourite Quotes

Quotes are beautiful because they represent a snippet of others’ realities. The following are a collection gathered throughout the years which speak to me.

There are also Some Soulful Writing Quotes, Some Soulful Travel Quotes, Some Soulful Artists Quotes.

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche


“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”       
― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross


“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
― Rumi


“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Rumi


“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
― Rumi



“Blessed are the weird people ― poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters & troubadours ― for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.”
― Jacob Nordby



“Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.”
― Albert Einstein

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
― Pablo Picasso



“As we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
– Marianne Williamson



“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
― Confucius



“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead



“Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something: If you have nothing, then you have everything, because you have the freedom to do anything, without the fear of losing something.”
― Jarod Kintz



“When I look into the eyes of an animal I do not see an animal. I see a living being. I see a friend. I feel a soul.” 
― A.D. Williams



“The only thing constant in life is change.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld



“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain



“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
― Mark Twain



“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
― Albert Einstein



“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
― Albert Einstein 



“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein



“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
― Confucius



“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
― Thomas Paine



“If you don’t build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs.”
― Tony Gaskins



“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
― Charles Bukowski



“Find what you love and let it kill you.”
― Charles Bukowski



“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates



“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle



“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
― Ferdinand Foch



“Beware of artists. They mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous.”
― Queen Victoria



“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy



“Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.”
― Edmund Lee



“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”

― Richard P. Feynman



“When it comes time to teach, teach from your experience. Go out and do, learn from the doing, then teach from the knowing.”    
― Peter McWilliams



“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“If you understand, things are just as they are; If you do not understand, things are just as they are.”

— Zen proverb 



“The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”

― C.S. Lewis



“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
― Roald Dahl



“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”
― Lao Tzu



“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching



“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it.”
― Charles F. Kettering



“Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?”
― Sun Tzu



“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde



“In a time of universal deceit ― telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell



“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson



“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Aristotle



“They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.”
― Khalil Gibran



“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back and realize they were big things.”
― Robert Brault



“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
― Rumi



“Your work is not to drag the world kicking and screaming into a new awareness. Your job is to simply do your work ― Sacredly, Secretly, and Silently ― and those with "eyes to see and ears to hear," will respond.”
― The Arcturians



“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
― Nikola Tesla 



“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
― Carl G. Jung 



“The difference between who you are and who you want to be, is what you do.”
― Bill Phillips



“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin 



“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”
– Albert Einstein 



“Speak truth in humility to all people. Only then can you be a true man.”
― Sioux Proverb 



“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi 



“What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?”
― Bill Hicks



“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.”
― Michel de Montaigne



“Travel brings power and love back into your life.”
― Rumi



“It’s like the universe screams in your face, ‘Do you know what I am? How grand I am? How old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you, compared to me?’ And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, ‘Dude, I am you.’”
― Phil Hellene



“When you know yourself, your ‘I’ness vanishes and you know that you and Allah are one and the same.”
— Ibn Arabi



“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
― Timothy Leary 



“The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.”
― Carl Sagan



“I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it’s so evil? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it? Because they’re afraid that there’s more to reality than they have confronted. That there are doors that they’re afraid to go in, and they don’t want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don’t know. And that makes us a little out of their control.”
― Ken Kesey


 
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus



“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre 



“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King



“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it ― basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

― Charles Bukowski 



“When man feels free to be all of himself, there is a magic in every littlest act and thought.”
― Alan Watts



“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― Carl G. Jung



“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
― Pablo Picasso 



“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
― Nikola Tesla

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“‘Turn on’ meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. ‘Tune in’ meant interact harmoniously with the world around you—externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. ‘Drop Out’ meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean ‘Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.’”
— Tomothy Leary Flashbacks, 1983
 



“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.”
― Hunter S. Thompson 



“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death 



“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”
― Joseph Campbell, Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research 



“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
― Mark Twain 



“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”

— Alan W. Watts



“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
― Alan W. Watts 



“When an ordinary man attains knowledge he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding he is an ordinary man.”
— Zen Proverb



“The souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper – often only a spark – to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer – and have time to grab a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity – its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers, and without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark.”

― Plato



“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.”
― Rumi



“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky 



“When you’re young, you don’t know, but you don’t know you don’t know, so you take some chances. In your twenties and thirties you don’t know, and you know you don’t know, and that tends to freeze you; less risk taking. In your forties you know, but you don’t know you know, so you may still be a little tentative. But then, as you pass fifty, if you’ve been paying attention, you know, and you know you know. Time for some fun.”
― George Carlin




“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you; and whosoever shall know himself shall find it.”
― Ancient Egyptian proverb 


“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
― Plato 



“The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. If artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.”
— Terence McKenna




“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”
― Carl G. Jung



“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road



“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect—you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.”
― Bob Marley 




“Travelling ― it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”
― Ibn Battuta 



“When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want?
Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement? Of course not. What will matter then will be people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn’t they matter most now?”
― Max Lucado  



“It takes a very long time to become young.”
― Pablo Picasso



“The most sophisticated people I know — inside they are all children.”
― Jim Henson



“The secret to living well and longer is: Eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.”
— Tibetan proverb  



“When I hear somebody say ‘Life is hard’, I am always tempted to ask ‘Compared to what?’”
— Sydney J. Harris



“When you have lived your individual life in your own adventurous way and then look back upon its course, you will find that you have lived a model human life, after all.”
— Joseph Campbell 



“An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: ‘No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.’”
— Carl G. Jung



“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours; in proportion as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
— Henry David Thoreau 



“Anybody who tells you that he has some way of leading you to spiritual enlightenment is like somebody who picks your pocket and sells you your own watch. Of course if you didn’t know you had a watch, that might be the only way of getting you to realize.”
— Alan Watts 



“Much has been said of the loneliness of wisdom...how the Truth seeker becomes a pilgrim wandering from star to star. To the ignorant, the wise man is lonely because he abides in distant heights of mind. But the wise man himself does not feel lonely. Wisdom brings him nearer to life; closer to the heart of the world than the foolish man can ever be.”

— Manly P. Hall  



“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
— Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit 



“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
— Alan Watts 



“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
―Khalil Gibran, The Prophet (1923)



“It’s fun to be a free person. It’s fun to not depend upon an institution, an ideology, an other person, a place, a time. And it’s very hard to sell this form of fun. People are afraid. People have been dis-empowered, I think, through the process of juvenilization. People describe themselves as frightened children, you know? They want methods, gurus, partners, safe-havens, stipends, sabbaticals, they just want all these things to make it easier for themselves. But they don’t make them easier for you. If you have all that, you will be soft and mushy beyond reclamation. You know? You will contribute nothing to the human adventure.”
— Terence McKenna



“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



“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.”
― Henri Bergson

“The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God… Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there’s always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.” — Pema Chödrön

ALSO VIEW:

Some Soulful Writing Quotes

Some Soulful Travel Quotes

Some Soulful Artists Quotes