504 Acceptance Quotes

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul, On these strange words - for ever - whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens - Thee we wait!

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody. Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about? Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut-a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul.

It's like you wanting to marry Miss World and she doesn't want you, what can I do about it? I can try to help you, but if she does not want to marry you what can I do?

I feel much better, now that I've given up hope.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough: Man meets woman, and they fall in love, But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough. You got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.

The highway is alive tonight But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

I think that's what I love about my life. There's no maniacal master plan. It's just unfolding before me.

A man must take the fat with the lean.

Whoever you hate will end up in your family. You don't like gays? You're gonna have a gay son. You don't like Puerto Ricans? Your daughter's gonna come home with Livin' La Vida Loca!

You can't be happy that fire cooks your food and be mad it burns your fingertips.

You play the hand you're dealt. I think the game's worthwhile.

I'm not the man to baulk at a low smell, I'm not the man to insist on asphodel. This sounds like a He-fellow, don't you think? It sounds like that. I belch, I bawl, I drink.

When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

Adventure is making the distant approach nearer but romance is having what is where it is which is not where you are stay where it is.

If people really want to go, and really try all their lives, I think they will get in; for I don't believe there are any locks on that door, or any guards at the gate. I always imagine it is as it is in the picture, where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor Christian as he comes up from the river.

that which is impossible to force, it is impossible to hinder.

Say good-bye to Pat, say good-bye to Jack and say good-bye to yourself, because you're a nice guy.

I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.

Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money.

Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.

I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.

If one cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.

Whatever happens in life is fine - just trust in that.

Love is a driver, bitter and fierce if you fight and resist him, Easy-going enough once you acknowledge his power.

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

Time is the king of all men, he is their parent and their grave, and gives them what he will and not what they crave.

The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you.

I have seen these ways of God: I know of no reason For fire and change and torture and the old returnings.

The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.

What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. Nothing to do but stretch out comfortably on the rack, in the blissful knowledge you are nobody for all eternity. A pity I should have to give tongue at the same time, it prevents it from bleeding in peace, licking the lips.

You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness.

Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure; be unattached.

The mantra is forget your size discover your shape and transform yourself.

I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever.

I wish they would only take me as I am.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.

There's a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I've always been a fool.

We cannot understand what happens in the universe. What is glorious in it is united with what is full of horror. What is full of meaning is united to what is senseless. The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive - it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle. And we must inevitably resign ourselves to this.

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark.

My wife is one of the best wimin on this Continent, altho' she isn't always gentle as a lamb with mint sauce.

'Tis possible, young sir, that some excess Mars youthful judgment and old men's no less; Yet we must take our counsel as we may For (flying years this lesson still convey), 'Tis worst unwisdom to be overwise, And not to use, but still correct one's eyes.

He have his goodness now, God forbid I take it from him!

What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery.

My biggest problem is what to do about all the things I can't do anything about.

By accepting you as you are, I do not necessarily abandon all hope of your improving.

Accept me for what I am - completely unacceptable.

It's good to have some certainty in life - even if it's only that I'm in deep trouble.

To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy existence.

You cannot force the Now. - But can you neither condemn nor justify and yet be extraordinarily alive as you walk on? You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.

So let's take the good times as they go and I'll meet you further on up the road...

At one campus where I was lecturing, I asked a friend, 'How many of my colleagues know I'm gay?' He answered, 'All of them.' I wasn't surprised. But, just the same, it was kind of spooky, because not one of them had ever given me the faintest sign that he or she knew. If I had spoken about it myself, most of them would have felt it was in bad taste.

'I'm not different. I'm not different at all. The wrapping is different but the gift is still the same.'

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Two principles we should always have ready - that there is nothing good or evil save in the will; and that we are not to lead events, but to follow them.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

:death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.