Quotes & Sayings About Not Being Experienced

Couples in distress too often turn to solutions that can be summed up by "You do your thing and I'll do my thing" or "You take care of yourself and I'll take care of myself." We hear pop psychology pronouncements such as "I'm not ready to be in a relationship" and "You have to love yourself before anyone can love you."

Is any of this true? Is it really possible to love yourself before someone ever loves you?

Think about it. How could this be true? If it were true, babies would come into this world already self-loving or self-hating. And we know they don't. In fact, human beings don't start by thinking anything about themselves, good or bad. We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us. — Stan Tatkin

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self
to the mediating intellect
as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode. — William Styron

Westerners often define spirituality as denying oneself, being detached from earthly concerns, and being intent on otherworldly values. By contrast, the Hebrews experienced the world of spirit as robust, life-affirming, and this-worldly in character. Such was the "spiritual" orientation of the Hebrews. So-called spirituality did not come by negating the richness of life's experiences or withdrawing from the world. Instead, they affirmed creation by finding a sense of holiness in the here and now. There was no division between the sacred and secular areas of life. It was all God's world, and it was to be enjoyed without a sense of shame or guilt. In Paul's words, "to the pure, all things are pure" (Tit. 1:15). As trustees and stewards of God's world, human beings were to live within it and use it in accord with divine directives. — Marvin R. Wilson

Websites are kind of useless. There's so much great web content and design out there, but the ways in which they are being experienced are not being maximized. — Dhani Harrison

Grace flattened her palm on his chest. "I've not been writing it correctly."
"Writing what, exactly?"
"Passion. I forgot what it was," she whispered. "I went off what I saw in movies or read, but I haven't ... experienced ... it in many years."
He didn't like thinking about other men being with her, but they were in the past. Where they would remain. "Were they no' good lovers?"
"They were all right, but without passion, it all feels ... empty."
Arian tightened his arm around her before he rolled her onto her back so he could look into her face. "I'll be happy to show you several times a day. — Donna Grant

Most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were being regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation ... On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm — William L. Shirer

For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected. — Jane Goodall

Tucked inside the moments of this great sadness - this feeling of being punctured, scrambling and stricken - were also moments of the brightest, most swollen and logic shattering happiness I've ever experienced. One moment would be a wall of happiness so tall it could not be scaled; the next felt like falling into a pit of sadness that had no bottom. I realized you could not have one without the other, that this great capacity to love and be happy can be experienced only with this great risk of having happiness taken from you - to tremble, always, on the edge of loss. — Emily Rapp

We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.. moments like these are not the passive, receptive, relaxing timesthe best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Date of the award approached, I would not have accepted at all.
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self
to the mediating intellect
as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode, although the gloom, "the blues" which people go through occasionally and associate with the general hassle of everyday existence are of such prevalence that they do give many individuals a hint of the illness in its catastrophic form. — William Styron

When Christ said: I was hungry and you fed me, he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger. — Mother Teresa

Being bullied is something I experienced in school, and it is not fun. — Bridgit Mendler

But nobody yet had been able to dig down to what was most captivating about her: this was the mysterious ability of her soul to apprehend in life only that which had once attracted and tormented her in childhood, the time when the soul's instinct is infallible; to seek out the amusing and the touching: to feel constantly an intolerable, tender pity for the creature whose life is helpless and unhappy; to feel across hundreds of miles that somewhere in Sicily a thin-legged little donkey with a shaggy belly is being brutally beaten. Whenever she did come across a creature that was being hurt, she experienced a kind of legendary eclipse - when inexplicable night comes down and ash flies and blood appears on the walls - and it seemed that if at once, at once, she did not help, did not cut short another's torture (the existence of which it was absolutely impossible to explain in a world so conducive to happiness), her heart would not stand it, and she would die. — Vladimir Nabokov

I feel L.A. is unlike anything I've experienced. It's nice when I can relate to people, but that's not very often. I know they're out there, but I feel that there's a very big pressure here to be seen as being gorgeous and special. I don't think there's the same pressure in Australia. — Jocelyn Moorhouse

The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege. — Marilynne Robinson

Love is the state of being; it is not a personal feeling directed to a particular someone. Love is beyond romance and attraction.
Love is when it doesn't matter when you get that person or not because you have met your own self through that person and that self will always be with you....within you.Love is not your loftiest fantasy you always thought will happen to you. Love is not wanting someone at any cost and cursing them if you do not "get" them. Love is who you are - your very essence felt and experienced by all that come into your vicinity — Rashmit Kalra

[On hearing that 86% of gay teens have experienced harassment] Eighty-six percent? Eighty-six per-fuckin-cent WERE harassed?! That means fourteen per-fuckin-cent WEREN'T harassed? WHAT?!
At MY school a hundred percent of the children - gay, straight, transgendered, bi, sell ... or trade - WERE harassed. She's saying that fourteen percent of the gay students were NOT harassed? That seems impossible.
At MY school any one of us would have sucked Elton John's COCK at a mandatory school assembly for a fourteen percent chance of NOT being harassed. — Penn Jillette

Quentin Schultze says that we have become like tourists who are so enamored by our mode of transportation that we cruise through nation after nation largely indifferent to the people and the cultures around us. We have our passports filled with the little stamps telling people just how many places we've been, but what is the purpose of being in places if we have not experienced them? And what is the purpose of knowing people if we do not care to know them on anything more than a surface level? The trend today is toward these fleeting, surface-level interactions — Tim Challies

You needs uh man.
Janie laughed at all these well-wishers because she knew that they knew plenty of women alone; that she was not the first one they had ever seen. But most of the others were poor. Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn't represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them ... — Zora Neale Hurston

One good thing about being young is that you are not experienced enough to know you cannot possibly do the things you are doing. — Gene Brown

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans ... If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness. — Philip K. Dick

For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs. — Thomas Merton

It is essential to love that it be, not a focus of two persons on each other, but of two persons on the same thing external to them both.

Although it has always been on offer, God's love cannot really be experienced unless or until one works side by side with him at transforming the world--unless or until one has confronted real affliction with him ("suffer[ed] with him,' Paul says in Romans 8:17) while tackling the task of remodeling the world (in what Paul calls, again in Romans 8:17, being "joint-heirs with Christ").

Love, in other words, has to be understood as more than a mere emotion; it is a way of being together in the world or, better, a way of working together to change the world.

What begins as a kind of instrumentality--I hope only to be a toll in God's hands--eventually becomes a very real partnership, ideally bound by covenant. — Joseph M. Spencer

In talking with people that have experienced it, I learned that PTSD is something that a person in a position of authority sometimes thinks they're not supposed to have. They don't always have an avenue to personally address it or even discuss it. — Stana Katic

As my body lay dead on that stretcher (he later recovered from being struck by lightning attracted by his cell phone), I was reliving every moment of my life, including my emotions, attitudes, and motivations. The depth of emotion I experienced during this life review was astonishing. Not only could I feel the way both I and the other person had felt when an incident took place, I could also feel the feelings of the next person they reacted to. I was in a chain reaction of emotion, one that showed how deeply we affect one another. — Dannion Brinkley

Why do people all over the world, and at all times, want marvels that defy all verifiable facts? And are the marvels brought into being by their desire or is their desire an assurance rising from some deep knowledge, not to be directly experienced and questioned, that the marvelous is indeed an aspect of the real? — Robertson Davies

Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence. Only in this 'central experience is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love, experienced thus is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together ... they are one with each other by being one with themselves. — Erich Fromm

Where there are problems, there are angels hovering about just waiting for us to ask them to help us transform our suffering into blessings. I'm not being religious, I'm telling you the truth as I have experienced it ... And I'm not being trendy either. I was talking to angels long before they got fashionable ... So maybe you don't believe in angels, that's all right, they don't care. They're not like Tinkerbell, you know, they don't depend on your faith to exist. A lot of people didn't believe the earth was round either, but that didn't make it any flatter. — Nancy Pickard

One need not believe in Pallas Athena, the virgin goddess, to be overwhelmed by the Parthenon. Similarly, a man who rejects all dogmas, all theologies and all religious formulations of beliefs may still find Genesis the sublime book par excellence. Experiences and aspirations of which intimations may be found in Plato, Nietzsche, and Spinoza have found their most evocative expression in some sacred books. Since the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart, and a host of others have shown that this religious dimension can be experienced and communicated apart from any religious context. But that is no reason for closing my heart to Job's cry, or to Jeremiah's, or to the Second Isaiah. I do not read them as mere literature; rather, I read Sophocles and Shakespeare with all my being, too. — Walter Kaufmann

When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind. — John Lennon

I offered to pass along information about NEHSA to Heidi so she can let her patients know about it. I don't have any scientific or clinical data to back this up, but I think snow-boarding is the most effective rehabilitative tool I've experienced. It forces me to focus on my abilities and not my disability, to overcome huge obstacles, both physical and psychological, to stay up on that board and get down the mountain in one piece. And each time I get down the mountain in one piece, I gain a real confidence and sense of independence I haven't felt anywhere else since the accident, a sense of true well-being that stays with me well beyond the weekend. And whether snowboarding with NEHSA has a measurable and lasting therapeutic effect for people like me or not, it's a lot more fun than drawing cats and picking red balls up off a tray — Lisa Genova

My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers - the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being "reamed out" by managers - are part of what keeps wages low. If you're made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you're paid is what you are actually worth. It is hard to imagine any other function for workplace authoritarianism. Managers may truly believe that, without their unremitting efforts, all work would quickly grind to a halt. That is not my impression. While I encountered some cynics and plenty of people who had learned to budget their energy, I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief. On the contrary, I was amazed and sometimes saddened by the pride people took in jobs that rewarded them so meagerly, either in wages or in recognition. Often, in fact, these people experienced management as an obstacle to getting the job done as it should be done. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I say this because all religions, accurately understood, will take away your fear of not being enough. I believe there is a way to understand the tenets of your religion, right now, that will take away your fear and make you feel loved and safe. The problem is that no matter what you believe or to which religion you belong, there are two ways you can experience your beliefs. There is a fear way you can experience your religion, and a love way to experience it. All religions can be experienced both ways. All life philosophies can be experienced both ways too.
If you search your personal books of scripture, you will find both ideas equally represented. There will be verses or sections that validate a fear-based view of God and there will be some that validate a love-based view of God. Don't be confused by this. Both ideas had to be represented for you to have free agency. Anything less than equal representation of each idea would take away your freedom to choose. — Kimberly Giles

Have you ever experienced a pain so sharp in your heart that it's all you can do to take a breath? It's a pain you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy; you wouldn't want to pass it on to anyone else for fear he or she might not be able to bear it. It's the pain of being betrayed by a person with whom you've fallen in love. It's not as serious as death, but it feels a whole lot like it, and as I've come to learn, pain is pain any way you slice it. — Chelsea Handler

Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, with the meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner emptiness is experienced by others and is expressed on the outside as love. This love is not addressed to a specific person; it is a presence and quality that surrounds a person like a fragrance. — Swami Dhyan Giten

In providing a diagnosis, by giving a name to a condition, we've taken the first step toward being able to manage it. For individuals with AS, many who have struggled with the feeling that they are different all their lives, the fact that the difference has a name, and that others understand it, often comes as a huge relief. A part of that relief is knowing that they are not alone - that others have the same condition. For many, a diagnosis often ends the terrible sense of isolation that they have experienced. — Juanita P. Lovett

It had never occurred to me that what we call "God" could be experienced. For me, the word had referred to a being who might or might not exist, and in whom one could believe or disbelieve or about whom one could remain uncertain. But I realized there is a cloud of witnesses, Christian and non-Christian, for whom God, the sacred, is real, an element of experience, not a hypothetical being who may or may not exist and whom we can only believe in. For the first time in my life, I understood the affirmation that the earth is full of "the glory of God." Perhaps — Marcus J. Borg

The mystery of presence is that encounter wherein the self-disclosure of one evokes a deeper life in the other. There is nothing you need to "think" or understand to be present; it is all about giving and receiving right now, and it is not done in the mind. It is actually a transference and sharing of Being, and will be experienced as grace, gratuity and inner-groundedness. Thus there is always a great leap of inner authenticity that is associated with true mutual presence, because in being received graciously, we are able to receive ourselves at an ever-deeper level yet recognize that we are both part of something Greater itself. It gives one great happiness and deep joy. We really are socially contagious human beings, but we settle for "human doings." It is at the being level that life is most vitally transferred. — Richard Rohr

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light. — Martin Buber

Vagina Warriors are done being victims. They know no one is coming to rescue them. They would not want to be rescued. They have experienced their rage, depression, desire for revenge, and they have transformed them through grieving and service. They have confronted the depth of their darkness. They live in their bodies. They are community makers. They bring everyone in. They have a keen ability to live with ambiguity. They can hold two opposite thoughts at the same time. — Eve Ensler

[H]alf blinded you embraced your own body, and with the warmth still under your jacket, you walked up the pavement along the square, moving through the grey light, and let your thoughts seep softly in, undisturbed, on the way up to the station, but also walking as one of many in the chill of December. I liked the feeling being a we, being more than myself, being larger than myself, being surrounded by others in a way I had never experienced before, of belonging, and it made no difference if those who walked to the left or the right of me, in front or behind me on this street, did not share the same feeling. — Per Petterson

The "stigma" of finitude which appears in all things and in the whole of reality and the "shock" which grasps the mind when it encounters the threat of nonbeing reveal the negative side of the mystery, the abysmal element in the ground of being. This negative side is always potentially present, and it can be realized in cognitive as well as in communal experiences. It is a necessary element in revelation. Without it the mystery would not be mystery. Without the "I am undone" of Isaiah in his vocational vision, God cannot be experienced (Isa. 6: 5). Without the "dark night of the soul," the mystic cannot experience the mystery of the ground. — Paul Tillich

Earthly authority displays itself in giving orders, in magnificent apparel, in hordes of servitors, in sycophantic addresses; the authority of Jesus disposes of is, by contrast, spiritual, and expresses itself in serving, not being served, in seeking to be the least instead of the greatest, the last instead of the first, in finding wisdom in the innocence of children and truth in the foolishness of men rather than in those who pass for being sagacious and experienced in the world's ways. When we want to adulate men, we say they are godlike; but when God became Man, it was in the lineaments of the least of men. — Malcolm Muggeridge

My mother's death supervened, and this was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her ... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul. — Salvador Dali

When I was sectioned for six months, that was one of the worst experiences of my life, not being able to go out and have freedom. Having experienced it, it's almost inexplicably awful. — Adam Ant

And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double State much greater, instead of being less than he expected. — Benjamin Franklin

I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart. So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and — Charles Dickens

Money comes from prosperity. Prosperity is a feeling of having it all, being in the flow. This feeling attracts corresponding situations and opportunities. And this is eventually experienced physically as money and wealth. Prosperity is an inside job. Success is the person you become, not a point you chase after. — David Cameron Gikandi

When I got the job I thought about her a lot. Not only was I getting a great job in a really good movie, but it was with Lindsay Lohan. She's so famous and I don't have any of that, I have never experienced that kind of intense scrutiny that she's under, so of course I wondered what it would be like acting opposite her. I can tell you that it's like being with The Beatles. You cannot fathom the kind of attention she gets. It's mind boogling. — Chris Pine

She experienced a moment of incandescent wonder, a sense of being connected, not just to these people, but to everyone and everything alive: every beating heart, every fluttering wing, every green shoot thrusting itself up out of the earth, seeking, as she was, the sun. — Hillary Jordan

Life is not about control. It's not about getting. It's not about having. It's not about knowing. It's not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced. — Dee Hock

To any survivor who may be doubting whether what they've experienced is truly abuse, remember that emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse will never be, and should never be, considered part of the messy equation of a normal relationship. As both metal health professionals and survivors can attest to, the traumatic highs and lows of being with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath are not the natural highs and lows of regular relationships. That suggestion is quite damaging to society and to survivors all around the world. — Shahida Arabi

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. — Douglas Adams

Poetry was not meant to be a workhorse; it was not designed to paint pretty moral pictures of life; it was not brought into being to confuse us with cryptograms, or high platitudes, or pompous pretensions. The poet was meant to be a seer; he was designed to run toward the intensities and magnificences of life, to bathe his hands in reality. But where the mystic ran toward Reality in silence and lost himself in it, the poet as soon as he had experienced it, ran back toward humanity crying the good news and putting it into shimmering webs of words. — Francis Beauchesne Thornton

Wandering is not limited to geography. Also an altered state of consciousness, it allows a disembodied self to drift on currents of collective awareness with minimal attachment to the physical world. This state of wander tapped imaginative faculties that opened me to a freedom of being only previously experienced through travel. — Gina Greenlee

It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt. But on an occasion such as this it was different, for the spirit of convention was being rigorously adhered to, and in between his ribs Mr. Flay experienced twinges of pleasure. — Mervyn Peake

I experienced firsthand not only the mental and physical damage being unhealthy does to a person, but I also recognized the discrimination many overweight people faced because of their public image. And I, like everyone else, is susceptible to falling into negative patterns that can cause weight gain. — Maria Kang

He was glad to be human. For sure, it was a great inconvenience to have to walk on two legs and wear clothes. There were so many things he didn't know. Yet had he been a fish or a sunflower, and not a human being, he might never have experienced this emotion. — Haruki Murakami

I'm definitely happy with the way my career has gone, the success; but I even feel glad that I've experienced some failure in my life. That gives you perspective and humility about this business; it's good to realize that you're always just one movie away from not being in Vogue anymore. — Reese Witherspoon

There's no way a human being can escape his or her human-ness to be able to imagine God. We can talk about how we've experienced God, not what or who God is. — John Shelby Spong

I have never experienced being madly in love the way most people seem to have been, although it is not something I would miss. Instead I have had an enormous ability to love my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. — Astrid Lindgren

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank. — Erica Sehyun Song

Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree. — Fredrika Bremer

I also realized that in my family drama a very limited number of character traits were available to the players. In my mind, either I could be weak, wimpy, submissive, and pathetic, or I could be a raging tyrant and bully who demanded total compliance from everyone in my realm. The notion of being strong and assertive while staying calm, insisting on appropriate boundraries and on being treated with respect and dignity, were not in my realm of experience. Once I realized that I was much happier with the person I was in the rest of my life, I realized it was foolish not to be that "me" around my family as well. I began to feel liberated and genuinely felt they could take the new me or leave it. So far, they've chosen to leave it, but I feel a sense of integrity and self-respect that I had never experienced before. — Mark Sichel

Scheler writes: It is not the glowing prospect of a happy afterlife, but the experienced happiness of being in a state of grace of God while in throes of agony that released the wonderful powers in the martyrs. — Timothy Keller

When love plus death surrounds you, there is a transformation, an immense mutation, as if a new being is born. You are never the same again. But people do not love, and because they do not love they can't experience death the way I experienced it. Without love, death does not give you the keys to existence. With love, it hands over to you the keys to all that is. — Osho

The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of one's being to be experienced, explored, enriched and, thereby, educated. — Thomas Hanna

There was some point as a professor at Stanford and Harvard when I experienced being caught in some kind of a meaningless game in which the students were exquisite at playing the role of students and the faculty were exquisite at playing the role of faculty. I would get up and say what I had read in books and they'd all write it down and give it back as answers on exams but nothing was happening. I felt as if I were in a sound-proof room. Not enough was happening that mattered - that was real. — Ram Dass

He understood not only that she was close to him, but that he no longer knew where she ended and he began. He understood it in the painful feeling of being split which he experienced at that moment. He was offended at first, but in that same instant he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was him. In the first moment he felt like a man who, having suddenly received a violent blow from behind, turns with vexation and a desire for revenge to find out who did it, and realizes that he has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with and he must endure and ease the pain. — Leo Tolstoy

We have bred multiple generations of people who have not experienced knowing where you are the moment a news story broke, with that news story being great and grand and something that elevates society instead of diminishes it. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

But then I grew up, experienced some life, and I understood that when you merely switch from being a prisoner to being a guard, no one is freed, not even yourself. — Lisa Crystal Carver

We were thirsty for some form of beauty, even in an incomprehensible, overintellectual, abstract film with no subtitles and censored out of recognition. There was a sense of wonder at being in a public place for the first time in years without fear or anger, being in a place with a crowd of strangers that was not a demonstration, a protest rally, a breadline or a public execution...For a brief time we experienced collectively the kind of awful beauty that can only be grasped at through extreme anguish and expressed through art. — Azar Nafisi

And if we are being philosophical - which we today are - we can say that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero. We know that both states exist, but we will not be conscious of either experience: they are states that are necessary parts of life, even as they cannot be experienced as life. We assume the concept of nothingness, but we cannot prove it. But it must exist. — Hanya Yanagihara

I became aware that there was no barrier between what was inside and what was outside. My body was illuminated by a bright light. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as mouth and my mouth as nose. I experienced the world with the totality of my senses as my spirit gathered and my form dissolved. There was no distinction between muscles and bones. My body stopped being heavy and I felt like a floating leaf. Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me. — Liezi

But even a nice mom and dad like this can't really sense how their child's been assaulted by commercialism ever since she was little, how she's lived in fear of being eaten alive by the morons around her. They just don't get it.
Mom always lectures me about not being afraid of getting hurt, but all she can imagine is the kind of hurt she's experienced herself. She has no idea of the threats that surround kids these days, how much we're bullied, how much hurt this causes. — Natsuo Kirino

I now understand that I would never have been able to become a plausible critic of the absurdities of modern consciousness until I myself had experienced them. I did not become an orthodox believer or theologian until after I tried out most of the errors long rejected by Christianity. If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed. If the first forty were prodigal, the last forty have been a homecoming. — Thomas C. Oden

After years of falling into the same pattern of disappointments and heartbreak, I finally began to realize something profound. I had always thought that love of dunya meant being attached to material things. And I was not attached to material things. I was attached to people. I was attached to moments. I was attached to emotions. So I thought that the love of dunya just did not apply to me. What I didn't realize was that people, moments, emotions are all a part of dunya. What I didn't realize is that all the pain I had experienced in life was due to one thing, and one thing only: love of dunya. — Yasmin Mogahed

I've tried to prepare my daughter for the phenomenon I've experienced of beautiful young women being dismissed and devalued as interchangeable. I tell Rachel that if a relationship doesn't make you feel good about yourself as an individual, then it's not right. My grandmother told me once years ago that if you're ever with somebody who you find embarrasses you in public or private, you're with the wrong person. Walk away. — Kathleen Turner

Have you ever felt your destiny unfolding, beloved? Have you experienced the intensity of the hunt, the fixation of attention that only fate can explain? Have you ever told yourself your feelings were
excessive, but known that something huge and pivotally important was carrying you along like a riptide? You can fight that current all you want; you know it will still have its way with you. Or you can
try swimming along with it, and grow amazed by your own power - until you pause and realize that you aren't moving but being moved. You're not in control, not at all, and that's what makes the feeling so
exquisitely exciting. — Martha N. Beck

Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben. (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. — Viktor E. Frankl

I was tied down in that chair for 10 minutes and experienced what it was like to be completely powerless while someone else has complete dominance. It's sadistic, even though I find Richard to be a really lovely human being. That's what the whole film [Tickled] is about. It's not a film about tickling, but I think tickling offers a really good visual metaphor for the much bigger ideas that we were trying to get at about power and control - by people who have a lot of money - over people without money and who have no power in the relationship. — David Farrier

Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, "he said," "he exclaimed"; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. (pg. 226) — Victor Hugo

Not just as an actress, but on a human-being level, I've experienced frustration on many different levels. [With my] career, it would be more the frustration of not always finding challenging material or inspiring material ... [Acting is] therapeutic for me. I'm pretty accommodating. — Vera Farmiga

What was your first kiss like?"he had asked.
She answered, "I do not know as I have yet to experience such. Mayhap I should find a willing young man to help teach me how to kiss before I marry. With you being such a worldly and experienced man, mayhap you would want a wife who is just as experienced and worldly?"
His response left her laughing almost uncontrollably.
"It would bring me much relief to know you have not one grain of experience with kissing. I would hate to think you were comparing my kisses with anyone else's. Equally important is the fact that I might be drawn and quartered before our wedding day, for gutting any man who dare even think about kissing you. You would, in truth, be saving countless lives by remaining ignorant on the matter. — Suzan Tisdale

To possess and exercise omniscience is to never have sensed temperature, experienced a single emotion, or practiced a single vice. It is to have never been amazed, concerned, analytical, or sympathetic. By exercising omniscience, an Omni-maximum being could not move, be moved, or inspired. Such a being could not interfere, empathise, interject, alter, adjust, or give advice. Ever. Such a being could not devise a plan, hear music, imagine a story, or recognise art or deviancy in any guise, for it could never differentiate creativity from cold reality. Such a being could not know doubt, desire, success, or failure. It could not, therefore, know itself, and if it is incapable of that, then it is incapable of experiencing pleasure. — John Zande

Every great creative idea, formulated as a philosophy, has a social setting - in time, in a geographical location, in a political economy, in a matrix of interests and knowledge. It is not a free-swinging phenomenon like a balloon without moorings. It is not produced in a vacuum and, being creative, it does not work in a vacuum. Nurtured on things experienced and things known, it reaches out toward the unknown like a flower on a stalk growing out of the soil. — Mary Ritter Beard

What did he do?" he murmured.
"He said something about if his words didn't put me in my place, he would find something that would. And then he slapped me."
Bram abruptly regretted not making use of the knife he'd carried in his boot to the Hampton soiree. He could understand Cosgrove desiring her and wanting to control her. But to strike her... Bram was accustomed to being angry; he'd spent most of the past ten years in varying states of it. What he felt as he listened to Rosamund, though, to the shake of her words and the despair in her voice, was deeper and hotter than anything he'd ever experienced. Plainly and simply, it was fury. White-hot, blood-boiling fury.
"Hope that he enjoyed hitting you, Rosamund," he said in a low voice, "because he will never touch you again. — Suzanne Enoch

Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable ... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing. — Amy Tan

I love that as a black person I've experienced not being a minority. I think that's helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights. — David Oyelowo

In the boys' accounts of being emotionally and intellectually engaged by their teachers, they convey a sense of being transported, exploring new territory, and feeling newly effective, interested, and powerful. Experienced this way, school is not an institution or an imposition of any kind; it is instead the locus of a particular, often quite personal, learning relationship in which the boy is not so much a "student" as he is fully himself, only incidentally at school. — Michael Reichert

All the pains in this world are assumed pains. It is 'wrong belief'! People have the illusion of pain. This illusion is being experienced. What was seen with the eyes is not being experienced. To have illusory experience means to spend the entire night 'dying' in the fear of ghosts. That is what it is. — Dada Bhagwan

It's called being in love. It's more frightening than confronting your deepest fear and opens you to being hurt beyond the physical plane." He placed a hand over his heart. "It might seem as though it's a weakness to you but it is proof that we are more than numbers, experiments, or whatever else Mercile intended us to be. It takes bravery and strength to feel such strong emotions for one person when we were denied from birth the chance to ever care about anything or anyone. I'm not saying it's easy or painless. It is probably one of the most complex things I've experienced. Jessie is my life. My heart beats for her and I will admit to all that I wouldn't want to go on if I lost her. The unmated ones don't understand and are currently looking confused or horrified. I'm hopeful they'll know the ups and downs of falling in love one day. It's a gift and a curse at times but everyone should experience it. It's a part of life and we are survivors. — Laurann Dohner

There is point in your life when you come face to face with the reality that you cannot take another step on your own. For me, I had never experienced that point, but depression brought me there. I have slowly, painfully and continually been confronted by my brokenness. Coming to terms with the fact that I am broken has been at the center of my accepting my being loved.
For me, now, there exists a sense of desperate need for what God brings to my spiritual and mental self. Without His voice I cannot cope with the darkness, but with His whisper of "you are My beloved", I can take a step each day away from the chasm. I am broken but not beyond mending, not beyond love.
It has been this desperation that has opened a crevice in which I am seeing Him for the first time. He is why my soul can find some peace even when my mind is dark and numb. It is this love that continually has brought me back from the edge of the impostor to the honesty of my broken, inner self — David Hulon Hood

As long as some creature experienced joy, then the condition for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. However, if any living being suffered, then for all the rest the shadow could not be entirely cast off. A herd animal such as man would acquire a higher survival factor through this; an owl or a cobra would be destroyed. — Philip K. Dick

Rimbaud held the keys to a mystical language that I devoured even as I could not fully decipher it. My unrequited love for him was as real to me as anything I had experienced. At the factory where I had labored with a hard-edged, illiterate group of women, I was harassed in his name. Suspecting me of being a Communist for reading a book in a foreign language, they threatened me in the john, prodding me to denounce him. It was within this atmosphere that I seethed. It was for him that I wrote and dreamed. He became my archangel, delivering me from the mundane horrors of factory life. His hands had chiseled a manual of heaven and I held them fast. The knowledge of him added swagger to my step and this could not be stripped away. I tossed my copy of Illuminations in a plaid suitcase. We would escape together. — Patti Smith

One splendid summer afternoon Kaspar realized he had never been happier in his life or both of his lives, past and present. Not fireworks-orgasms-and-champagne happy, but on waking in the morning he was glad almost every single day to be exactly where he was. He had never before experienced the feeling of genuine, constant well-being and it was a true revelation. The longer the satisfaction continued, the less he thought about his previous life as a mechanic and the extraordinary things he'd once seen and been able to do. Misery may love company but happiness is content to be alone. The funny irony of his existence now was, as long as he was this happy and content with his lot, Kaspar didn't need to make much of an effort to "walk away" from his mechanic's life because now he was sated with this one both in mind and heart. — Jonathan Carroll

There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness. — Charles M. Schulz

The sense of community does not arise out of collective movement, nor from conforming to some group direction. Quite the contrary. Each individual tends to use the opportunity to become all that he or she can become. Separateness and diversity - the uniqueness of being "me" - are experienced — Carl Rogers

If you have ever experienced that feeling of being "stuck" with writing, it is not because you haven't put your butt in a chair. It's because you are suffering from emotional procrastination toward writing. — Monica Leonelle