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.

Cornbread, ain't nothing wrong with that.

'And I have no regrets about anything in my life - even the stuff I went through with my father, because in many ways it made me who I`m today.'

Don't mourn your luck that's failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive - don't mourn them uselessly: as one long prepared, and full of courage, say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.

The erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and short-lived affairs. Love, there, is rarely more than physical passion, and when tenderer emotions exist, they are almost always one-sided. At the same time, he refuses to pretend that his memories of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt.

The bearer of this letter is an old friend of mine not quite the right side of the blanket as they say in fact he is the son of a first rate butcher but his mother was a decent family called Hyssopps of the Glen so you see he is not so bad and is desireus of being the correct article.

Time and again i tell myself I'll stay clean tonight But the little green wheels keep following me ! (Oh no, not again!) I'm stuck with a valuable friend I'm happy , hope you're happy too!

'Maybe Nina wouldn't have died if I hadn't moved in with them and drawn Sheener after me, but I can't feel guilty about that. I tried hard to be a good foster daughter to them, and they were happy with me. What happened was that life dropped a big custard pie on us, and that's not my fault; you can never see the custard pies coming. It's not good slapstick if you see the pie coming.' 'Custard pie?' he asked, perplexed. 'You see life as a slapstick comedy? Like the Three Stooges?' 'Partly.' 'Life is just a joke then?' 'No. Life is serious and a joke at the same time.' 'But how can that be?' 'If you don't know,' she said, 'maybe I should be the one asking the questions here.'

How can you hope to win against goddamn time travelers? It's like playing blackjack when the dealer is God. : Come to think of it, all of life is a blackjack game with God as the dealer, isn't it? So this is no worse.

You're a victim of collision on the open sea / And Buddy no one said life was free.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. ... I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. ... I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I believe in the purifying process of sorrow, and I believe that death is a manifestation of life.

Albert! Stop telling God what to do.

True instruction is this: -to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole. (26)

Piety towards the Gods, be sure, consists chiefly in thinking rightly concerning them-that they are, and that they govern the Universe with goodness and justice; and that thou thyself art appointed to obey them, and to submit under all circumstances that arise; acquiescing cheerfully in whatever may happen, sure that it is brought to pass and accomplished by the most Perfect Understanding. Thus thou wilt never find fault with the Gods, nor charge them with neglecting thee. (163)

The maple tree that night Without a wind or rain Let go its leaves Because its time had come.

It is the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times, and who can damn us merely for forgetting for the thousandth time?

'I'm just me, you know, just me. I'm very disorganised at times, I'm organised at times and... I'm just me.'

'If I had to do it again, yes, why not, why not. I'd do it slightly differently.'

The appeal to heaven breaks off. The petals begin to fall, in self-forgiveness. It is a flower. On this mountainside it is dying.

Customs will reconcile people to any atrocity.

In teaching me the way to live It taught me how to die.

'During Alfven's visit he gave a lecture at the University of Chicago, which was attended by Enrico Fermi. As Alfven described his work, Fermi nodded his head and said, 'Of course.' The next day the entire world of physics said. 'Oh. of course.''

There was not much more for us to talk about, Whatever we had once was gone. So I turned my cab into the driveway, Past the gate and the fine trimmed lawns. And she said we must get together, But I knew it'd never be arranged. And she handed me twenty dollars, For a two fifty fare, she said 'Harry, keep the change.' Well another man might have been angry, And another man might have been hurt, But another man never would have let her go... I stashed the bill in my shirt.

I can't make her younger, taller, or change her gender. I can't do anything other than to tell you who she is.

It is nonsense, Mr. Burke, to suppose I can live. My sufferings are great but they will soon be over.

He seems to be on a personal crusade not just to legalize it but to legitimize this type of activity.

Welcome, kindred glooms! Congenial horrors, hail!

I always had an understanding and a connection and a good relationship with gay men and women. And I don't want to censor myself about the [censored] subject because I don't have a problem with gay or straight or any of that.'

I don't give a fuck if you boo, as long as you boo in key...

There's not a hair Sticks on my head but, like a leaden plummet, It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither; The journey is not long.

There was no point. It's already done. Let's leave that alone. I mean, if you're not going to come there with something new, then just leave it alone.

In the spight of his teeth.

Cash: I went into a coma and I was there for 12 days. They all thought I was dying and they couldn't diagnose what was wrong with me. They finally came up with a diagnosis of Shy-Drager syndrome. It was few months later they realized I didn't have that so it was Parkinson's. And then it was not that. Then finally it was autonomic neuropathy. ... And I'm pretty well resolved to the fact that that's what it is. And it's a slow process of the nerve endings. King: No cure? Cash: No, I don't think so. But that's all right. There's no cure for life either.

There are three stages of truth. First is that it can't be true, and that's what they said. You couldn't immunize against polio with a killed-virus vaccine. Second phase: they say, 'Well, if it's true, it's not very important. And the third stage is, 'Well, we've known it all along.'

This is where I want to be. This is what I need. This is where I want to be, But I know that this will never be mine.

What often happens if you study this integral map is that it begins to make room in your psyche, in your being, in your soul, for all the parts of you that were disowned, whether by society, your parents, your peers, whomever. An integral approach even makes room for those who did the disowning to you.

Who is the loving person? The loving person is the person who loves him or herself. I say this so often, and people say, 'Oh yes, you're so right,' but they don't do it! You will never be able to love anyone else until you love yourself. Even With you Fat Thighs!

It just happens to be very important to me to win with the hand I was dealt.

Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem?

So from the age of 10, I became anorexic, and then bulimic, and then stayed that way for about twenty years, until one day I just said, Hey, what if this is it? What if this is just what I look like, and nothing I do changes that? So how much time would I save if I stopped taking that extra second every time I look in the mirror to call myself a big fat fuck? How much time would I save if I just let myself walk by a plate-glass window without sucking in my gut and throwing back my shoulders? How much time would I save? And it turns out I save about 97 minutes a week. I can take a pottery class.

Old age is like flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.

It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see.

On ne doit plus craindre les mots lorsqu'on a consenti aux choses.

Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): 'Mornin', ma'am! And isn't it a lovely mornin'?' Old Woman: 'Up yours, nigger!' Jim 'The Waco Kid' (Gene Wilder) [consoling Bart afterwards]: 'What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny'? 'Make yourself at home'? 'Marry my daughter'? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers... these are people of the land... the common clay of the New West. You know - morons.'

For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting.

What is required is a new mindset and a change of heart, to be able to see the person across the ocean as our neighbour. Finally, I have hope because of what I see in my children, and some of their generation. I took my first trip abroad at the age of 19. My children were even more fortunate than I. They had their first exposure to foreign culture as infants, and they were raised in a multicultural environment. And I can say absolutely that my son and daughter are oblivious to colour and race and nationality. They see no difference between their friends Noriko, Mafupo, Justin, Saulo and Hussam; to them, they are only fellow human beings and good friends. Globalization, through travel, media and communication, can also help us - as it has with my children and many of their peers - to see each other simply as human beings.

To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly without protest - this is where man's first duty lies.

Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all.

This is our epoch, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor - we did not choose it. This is our epoch, the air we breathe, the mud given us, the bread, the fire, the spirit! Let us accept Necessity courageously. It is our lot to have fallen on fighting times. Let us tighten our belts, let us arm our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Let us take our place in battle!

Death gestured with his hands and bade the king thrice welcome.

I never thought id lose you again But I knew we had lost each other on the day you first loved [him]. Then you should have told me! I wouldn't have done it That's why I didn't tell you. But it isn't true ... You would have done it anyway. And I wanted you to. You've never been happier.

Are you ready to reveal yourself to the rest of humanity? I've always been ready. The question is, are they ready to know me?

We realized that you were truly alive and beautiful in your perverse and tragic lonely way.

It's tragic isn't it, that we don't always get what we want in this world.

That was all she needed - was for him to tell her he didn't expect her to be the waterseer all the time, that he was marrying the fragile, imperfect human being, and not the overpowering image she inadvertently put on.

Maybe what we really want is for our children to be the dominant ones! Maybe I'm trying to see my own ambitions fulfilled in them, and that would be wrong, so I should be content with what they are.

All it did was let her step off that brink into the dark unknown with a smile on her face and pride in her heart. It made death sweet to her.

Of course she wasn't going to call, he knew that.

Please, someday if I'm real good, can't I be a real girl?