Obstructions Quotes & Sayings

Conscious evolution begins as we take responsibility for clearing our own obstructions. — Dan Millman

The process of making pieces in Chess do something useful (whatever it may be) has received a special name: it is called the attack. The attack is that process by means of which you remove obstructions. — Emanuel Lasker

Om is that divine elixir that can clear away all the obstructions in our energy bodies. — Banani Ray

One who speaks 'completely' negative creates karmic obstructions (antray) and 'positive' does not create any obstruction (antray). — Dada Bhagwan

Neither the world nor one's actions cause obstructions; kashays (inner anger, pride, deceit, greed) cause obstruction! — Dada Bhagwan

There's a moment where Jobs says that one day you will wake up and realize that the world was created by people no smarter than you. I want people to believe that; we're so often bound by obstructions and judges. — Joshua Michael Stern

Believing in negative thoughts is one of the greatest obstructions to success. — Charles F. Glassman

Violence sometimes may have cleared away obstructions quickly, but it never has proved itself creative. — Albert Einstein

It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of functions, as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs. Neither can do anything but remove obstructions; neither can cure; nature alone cures. Surgery removes the bullet out of the limb, which is an obstruction to cure, but nature heals the wound. So it is with medicine; the function of an organ becomes obstructed; medicine so far as we know, assists nature to remove the obstruction, but does nothing more. And what nursing has to do in either case, is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him. — Florence Nightingale

Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk, innocent. Thousands of words, myriad interpretations, are only to free you from obstructions. If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don't separate from this skin bag here and now. — Shitou Xiqian

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations — Adam Smith

Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow. — Cesare Pavese

Obstacles (antray) are indeed due to desires. As desires keep on decreasing, so do the obstructions (antray) keep on getting destroyed. Then, everything is acquired (at that stage). — Dada Bhagwan

Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The great lesson here taught is for all time. Often the Christian life is beset by dangers, and duty seems hard to perform. The imagination pictures impending ruin before and bondage or death behind. Yet the voice of God speaks clearly, "Go forward." We should obey this command, even though our eyes cannot penetrate the darkness, and we feel the cold waves about our feet. The obstacles that hinder our progress will never disappear before a halting, doubting spirit. Those who defer obedience till every shadow of uncertainty disappears and there remains no risk of failure or defeat, will never obey at all. Unbelief whispers, "Let us wait till the obstructions are removed, and we can see our way clearly;" but faith courageously urges an advance, hoping all things, believing all things. — Ellen G. White

You cannot teach a child any more than you can grow a plant. All you can do is on the negative side - you can only help. It is a manifestation from within; it develops its own nature - you can only take away obstructions. — Swami Vivekananda

The analysis of our illustrations has taught us another incidental lesson. This is that, when we study the effects of various proposals, not merely on special groups in the short run, but on all groups in the long run, the conclusions we arrive at usually correspond with those of unsophisticated common sense. It would not occur to anyone unacquainted with the prevailing economic half-literacy that it is good to have windows broken and cities destroyed; that it is anything but waste to create needless public projects; that it is dangerous to let idle hordes of men return to work; that machines which increase the production of wealth and economize human effort are to be dreaded; that obstructions to free production and free consumption increase wealth; that a nation grows richer by forcing other nations to take its goods for less than they cost to produce; that saving is stupid or wicked and that squandering brings prosperity. — Henry Hazlitt

It is not sufficient to know the right answers. One must also know the questions that produced them. Indeed, one must also know what a question is, for not every sentence that ends with a rising intonation or begins with an interrogative is necessarily a question. There are sentences that look like questions but cannot generate any meaningful answers, and, as Francis Bacon said, if they linger in our minds, they become obstructions to clear thinking. — Neil Postman

Republicans, as well as Democrats committed to our constitutional framework, should fearlessly marshal the administration's frauds, obstructions, and violations of law. They should demand transparency and accountability for the lies, the broken oaths, the betrayal of the rule of law, and the damage wrought - including lives not only devastated but lost due to the administration's recklessness. — Andrew McCarthy

The 'information' one receives from within, shows credit [punya] and debit [paap] karmas. All the Knowledge-Vision is present within. Everything can be Known from within but only as long as you do not create obstructions. If you were to cross-over [violate] it, then the 'information' will stop coming through. — Dada Bhagwan

[Charlotte Bronte] had thought of every maneuver for circumventing those stony obstructions of wives who would not remove themselves. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed. — Horace Mann

Your body's ability to function as a clean and efficient channel is limited by stiffness, lack of strength, and lack of endurance. Your mind's ability is limited by the way it thinks about itself, by the way you think about you. The process of yoga is one of undoing the obstructions and limitations in your body and mind that inhibit the free flow of creative life force. — Erich Schiffmann

When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared. — Alexander Hamilton

This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton's famous phrase. Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a flood plain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age. — Steven Johnson

Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a superficial grace is so available. — Richard Diebenkorn

Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you. — Anthony De Mello

Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, through all the obstructions and the false appearances and the upsets you may have brought on yourself, to reach a meaning - using inventions of your imagination, perhaps helped out by your dreams and bits of good luck. And finally too, like Phoenix, you have to assume that what you are working in aid of is life, not death. But you would make the trip anyway - wouldn't you? - just on hope. 1974 — Eudora Welty

The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind. — David Hume

I think that providing obstructions in the live setting is when you get something that actually means something, as opposed to just aping your way through your greatest hits. — J. Tillman

Joys and sorrows are time-born and cannot last. Therefore, do not be perturbed by these. The greater the difficulties and obstructions, the more intense will be your endeavor to cling to His feet and the more will your prayer increase from within. And when the time is ripe, you will gain mastery over this power. — Anandamayi Ma

Obstructions on the way to enlightenment, are you kidding? Hey, they crucify people here. You think this is an easy place? — Frederick Lenz

When the emotion of romance is added to those of love and sex, the obstructions between the finite mind of man and Infinite Intelligence are removed. — Napoleon Hill

Just as a brook forms no eddy so long as it meets with no obstructions, so human nature, as well as animal, is such that we do not really notice and perceive all that goes on in accordance with our will. If we were to notice it, then the reason for this would inevitably be that it did not go according to our will, but must have met with some obstacle. On the other hand, everything that obstructs, crosses, or opposes our will, and thus everything unpleasant and painful, is felt by us immediately, at once, and very plainly. Just as we do not feel the health of our whole body, but only the small spot where the shoe pinches, so we do not think of all our affairs that are going on perfectly well, but only of some insignificant trifle that annoys us. — Arthur Schopenhauer

When words & manners leave you no space for yourself
make
very personal
very clear
& your obstructions will join you or disappear. — Ntozake Shange

If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul. — Hugh Black

Only thru a mucus-free diet can we expect to eliminate the accumulation of waste and obstructions deposited in the body tissues during a lifetime of wrong eating. — Arnold Ehret

In many ways, playing a game is like starting and running a business, which in turn is like embarking on a solo journey down a swiftly flowing river. However experienced you may be, however carefully you plan your trip in advance, once you're out there being whooshed along by a powerful current, you will be confronted by unexpected obstacles rising up and potentially blocking your way. A propensity to see the way around, over, or through these obstructions and a penchant for the perpetual challenge will keep you speeding on your exciting voyage to success. — Leslie Scott

The thoughts that creep into our brain about other people tell us less about those people than they do about ourself ... Understand that most judgments of others are an attempt to empower ourselves and give a sense of being better than the person we judge ... Our primitive nature (automatic brain) helps us believe that this is necessary for protection. Following this natural tendency puts up further obstructions to the law of attraction. — Charles F. Glassman

When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph. (William Carey, quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth 1971, p 140.) — William Carey

In the old stories, despite the impossibility of the incidents, the interest is always real and human. The princes and princesses fall in love and marry
nothing could be more human than that. Their lives and loves are crossed by human sorrows ... The hero and heroine are persecuted or separated by cruel stepmothers or enchanters; they have wanderings and sorrows to suffer; they have adventures to achieve and difficulties to overcome; they must display courage, loyalty and address, courtesy, gentleness and gratitude. Thus they are living in a real human world, though it wears a mythical face, though there are giants and lions in the way. The old fairy tales which a silly sort of people disparage as too wicked and ferocious for the nursery, are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions. — Andrew Lang

Buddhahood is a state free of all obstructions to knowledge and disturbing emotions. It is the state in which the mind is fully evolved. — Dalai Lama

What you want is already here, in the unified field of pure potential. Everything you need to fulfill your greatest desire is already part of your being. But it can't come out until you align with it, let go of the obstructions to it, and raise your vibration to the level at which it already exists. — Derek Rydall

Because you are not trying simply to complete a set of books or toys or Weetabix cards, you are trying to complete yourself, to get back to the whole person you were before, as a child, before the obstructions and compromises of adulthood got in the way. And yet, all you are really doing is accumulating a pile of crap, souvenirs of the futility of the quest. — Neil Perryman

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of us make our minds like spoilt children, allowing them to do whatever they want. Therefore it is necessary that Kriya-yoga should be constantly practised, in order to gain control of the mind, and bring it into subjection. The obstructions to Yoga arise from lack of control, and cause us pain. They can only be removed by denying the mind, and holding it in check, through the means of Kriya-yoga. — Swami Vivekananda

We're not dictated by the calendar, nor does the calendar sweep the obstructions from our lives when the second hand reaches midnight in the wee and fleeting hours of December. We can choose to move toward something new at any time. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

But one thing I've learned is that the minute I start fixating on what I don't have - time, money, a child I can send to camp for the summer, central air conditioning - I just feel that much hotter and put-upon, and those bad feelings seem to attract extra obstructions to my day. — Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Just as eagles soar through the vast expanse of the sky without meeting any obstructions, needing only minimal effort to maintain their flight, so advanced meditators concentrating on emptiness can meditate on emptiness for a long time with little effort. Their minds soar through space-like emptiness, undistracted by any other phenomenon. When we meditate on emptiness we should try to emulate these meditators. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. — George Washington

Each great work has to pass through three
stages - ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those
who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high
obstructions? If the whole world stands against you - sword
in hand - would you still dare to do what you think is
right? — Sandeep Gupta

Plowing through life, you're bound to run into obstructions. Some of life's trials result from mistakes and missteps, and some from poor choices. I know about that too, because I've made my share of blunders and had to face the consequences.
Other times, the unexpected lands in your hands like a wayward ball and the "trouble" coming at you is like a 250-pound linebacker blitzing straight off the edge.
— Jake Byrne

Yea, my friends, we have a king, whose name is Simurg, and whose residence is behind Mount Caucasus. He is close by, but we are far away from Him. The road to His throne is bestrewn with obstructions; more than a hundred thousand veils of light and darkness screen the throne. Hundreds of thousands of souls burn with an ardent passion to see Him, but no one is able to find his way to Him. Yet none can afford to do without Him. Supreme manliness, absolute fearlessness and complete self-effacement are needed to overcome those obstacles. If we succeed in getting a glimpse of His face, it will be an achievement indeed. If we do not attempt it, and if we fail to greet the Beloved, this life is not worth living." The — Farid Al-Din Attar

In general, 'Buddha' means 'Awakened One', someone who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance and sees things as they really are. A Buddha is a person who is completely free from all faults and mental obstructions. There are many people who have become Buddhas in the past, and many people will become Buddhas in the future. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

When the difficulty of a problem lies only in finding out what follows from certain fixed premises, mathematical methods furnish invaluable wings for flying over intermediate obstructions. — Arthur M. Wellington

It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. "Tread lightly on the paths," he had told me. "Others will come when you have gone."
That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two. — Louis L'Amour

To love is for the Soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make journeying delight. — George Henry Lewes

When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,
muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My life seems too fast now, so obstructions bother me less than they once did. I am no longer in a hurry to see what is around the next bend. I find myself wanting to backferry, to hover midstream, suspended. If I could do that, I might avoid many things: harsh words, foolish decisions, moments of inattention, regrets that wash over me, like water. (196) — Anne Fadiman

Now I happen to possess the bump of locality. It is not a virtue; I make no boast of it. It is merely an animal instinct that I cannot help. That things occasionally get in my way - mountains, precipices, rivers, and such like obstructions - is no fault of mine. My instinct is correct enough; it is the earth that is wrong. I led them by the middle road. That the middle road had not character enough to continue for any quarter of a mile in the same direction; that after three miles up and down hill it ended abruptly in a wasps' nest, was not a thing that should have been laid to my door. If the middle road had gone in the direction it ought to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go, of that I am convinced. — Jerome K. Jerome

It might behoove us to realize that isolation is the absence of all the senseless clutter, and all the incessant racket that would keep God from having ample room to show up and sufficient silence to be heard. Therefore, isolation may actually be the place where we are least isolated. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Once again, President Clinton is using American troops to deflect attention from his record of lies, distortions, obstructions of justice and abuse of power. — Ron Paul

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame. — Samuel Johnson

Wholeness or health is our natural state. The nature of healing involves removing obstructions to this natural state and bringing individuals into alignment with themselves and their world. Free of these obstructions, an individual's innate intelligence and self-regulating capabilties will guide him toward a state of well being. — Richard Carlson

May all the ill deeds, obstructions, and sufferings of beings Be transferred to me, without exception, at this moment, And my happiness and merit be sent to others. May all creatures be imbued with happiness! Just — Dalai Lama XIV