Richard Bach Quotations

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?

Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves.

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not. Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

I've owned 41 airplanes. A few of them would talk with me. This little seaplane, though, we've had long conversations in flight. There's a spirit in anything, I think, into which we weave our soul. Not many pilots talk about it, but they think about it in the quiet dark of a night flight.

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.

I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me.

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost.

Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

Same with anyone who's been flying for years and loves it still... we're part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we're one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!

You teach best what you most need to learn.

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Avoid problems, and you'll never be the one who overcame them.

To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

I know there's a principle of spirit. It works without space-time. I am subject to that principle, in spirit and in belief of body. Learn how spirit works, a few simple rules, living a perfect spiritual life is easy.

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.

Aerodynamics is mathematics for those who haven't learned to do calculus. In my case, too, for one who hasn't learned to add or multiply, at least the first time.

Jonathan is that brilliant little fire that burns within us all, that lives only for those moments when we reach perfection.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.

In order to win, you must expect to win.

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

One must learn to fall, if one would fly.

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing:The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

''To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is.'' ''He said, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.''

Look in a mirror and one thing's sure; what we see is not who we are.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world - even if what is published is not true.

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us?

Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly

When you have come to the edge of all the light you have And step into the darkness of the unknown Believe that one of the two will happen to you Either you'll find something solid to stand on Or you'll be taught how to fly!

You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.

You are not little because you are already grown, playing among your lifetimes as do we all, for the fun of living.

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

What are we trying to practice every day? If our friendship depends onthings like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time,we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we haveleft is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in themiddle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other onceor twice?

Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers.

The most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which we most loved to do

Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. The same questions, asked again, being you just the answers you need just the minute you need them.

Do you know what I learned from you? I learned what is possible, and now I must hold out for what I thought we had.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. 'Nothing' is the worst thing that can happen to us!

The way to avoid responsibility is to say, ''I've got responsibilities.''

There is such a thing as perfection...and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth....Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.

There's always some aftermath, good and bad, makes-me-happy or makes-me-unhappy, for anything we choose to do.

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes, a farewell is necessary before you can meet again and meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

You teach best what you need to learn.

Anyone desperate enough for suicide...should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try.

Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love.

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

If you love something, set it free; if it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

Can miles truly separate us from friends? If we want to be with someone we love, aren't we already there?

How do you know if your mission in life is finished? If you're still alive, it isn't.

The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly.

The idea that we are physical beings descended from primeval cells in nutrient soups, that idea does violence to my intuition, stomps all over it with football-shoes. The idea that we are descended from a jealous God who formed us out of dust to choo

Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall.

That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.

It doesn’t take time to change once you understand the problem...Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn’t take long to drop it, does it?

Have you ever felt so at one with the world, with the universe, with everything that is, that you were overcome with love? That is reality. That is the truth. What we make of it is up to us, as the painting of the sunrise is up to the artist. In our world humanity has strayed from that love. It lives hatred and power struggles and manipulations of the earth itself for its own narrow reasons. Continue and no one will see the sunrise. The sunrise will always exist, of course, but people on earth will know nothing of it and finally even stories of its beauty will fade from our knowing.

When we put up with any situation we don’t have to put up with, it’s not because we’re dumb. We put up with it, because we want the lesson only that situation can teach, and we want it more than freedom myself.