Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

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

Richard Bach
We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

Richard Bach
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

Richard Bach
We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love.

Richard Bach
They... found Jonathan gliding peacefully and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls which appeared at his wings were pure as starlight... most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from his own.

Richard Bach
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

Richard Bach
A moment later Jonathan's body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. Don't let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I'm a seagull. I like to fly, maybe…

Richard Bach
Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.

Richard Bach
The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.

Richard Bach
If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

Richard Bach
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again.

Richard Bach
It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.

Richard Bach
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

Richard Bach
You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.

Richard Bach
Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.

Richard Bach
Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!

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

Richard Bach
You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way".

Richard Bach
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.

Richard Bach
You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.

Richard Bach
One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.

Richard Bach
Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding.

Richard Bach
He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all

Richard Bach
But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.

Richard Bach
Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!

Richard Bach