Openhearted Quotes & Sayings

We are flooded with books; books come pouring out of the publishing meat grinder. And, the quality has dropped severely. We may be able to print a book better, but intrinsically the book, perhaps, is not better than it was. We have a backlist of books, superb books, by Margaret Wise Brown, by Ruth Krauss, by lots of people. I'd much rather we just took a year off, a moratorium: no more books. For a year, maybe two - just stop publishing. And get those old books back, let the children see them! Books don't go out of fashion with children; they only go out of fashion with adults. So that kids are deprived of the works of art which are no longer around simply because new ones keep coming out.

from The Openhearted Audience (1980) — Maurice Sendak

Everything in life is nonsense. It's just a question of perspective. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Now let's get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters'll be taken. — J.K. Rowling

Grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available, when we become openhearted and open-minded, and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know. — Adyashanti

I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy, overwhelming despair - dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. It's like there's something already dead inside. My whole being has been pulling back into that void for months. (81) — Kay Redfield Jamison

I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs. — Bertrand Russell

She laughed loudly. It sounded to her husband like someone pushing a witch in a barrel over a waterfall. He pictured his wife in a barrel falling into very deep water, and this cheered him up a bit. — John Connolly

I want to mark you. I want to fuck every other guy out of your body until I'm all you feel, all you remember."
~ Ronan — Mia Asher

American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor. — Upton Sinclair

Beyond even any teaching, though, the aspect of spiritual life that is the most profound is the element of grace. Grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available, when we become openhearted and open-minded, and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know. In this gap of not knowing, in the suspension of any conclusion, a whole other element of life and reality can rush in. This is what I call grace. It's that moment of "ah-ha!" - a moment of recognition when we realize something that previously we never could quite imagine. — Adyashanti

People do not knowingly join "cults" that will ultimately destroy and kill them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. It is mostly the innocent and naive who find themselves entrapped. In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late. — Deborah Layton

You couldn't find a Jewish sheik? — Libby Fischer Hellmann

It may be the reason behind the apostolic prayer for the disciples to be filled with a dimension of the Holy Spirit beyond the original baptism. This conceptual crisis may account for the falling away of the Galatians; the sustained immaturity of the Hebrews; the lawlessness of the Corinthians; and the mixture among the Colossians. It becomes obvious that the apostolic exhortations to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord," and to be "steadfast and immovable" are invitations to a sphere of intelligence that promote productive stewardship in the Kingdom of God. — Kirby Clements Sr.

The Dalai Lama was saying that when one is thinking about others with kindness and compassion, one is never lonely. Openheartedness - warmheartedness - is the antidote to loneliness. It has often amazed me that one day I can walk down the street feeling judgmental and critical of others, and I will feel separate and lonely, and the next day I can walk down the same street with more openhearted acceptance and compassion and suddenly everyone seems warm and friendly. It is almost as if my inner state of mind and heart changes the physical and social world around me completely. This — Dalai Lama XIV

Jesus calls us to a holiness that is positive, generous and openhearted. It's a difficult, daring challenge - do we accept it? — Justin Welby

We laugh. Bec stares at us uncertainly, then joins in. She sounds a bit like Bill-E when she laughs, and for a few happy moments it's as if me, my brother and uncle are together again, relaxing in Dervish's study, sharing a joke, not a care in the world. — Darren Shan

Karou was, simply, lovely. Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx. Beyond merely pretty, her face was vibrantly alive, her gaze always sparking and luminous, and she had a birdlike way of cocking her head, her lips pressed together while her dark eyes danced, that hinted at secrets and mysteries. — Laini Taylor

Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
Though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away. — Laozi

Children are loving, they don't gossip, they don't complain, they're just openhearted. They're ready for you. They don't judge. They don't see things by way of color. They're very child-like. That's the problem with adults: they lose that child-like quality. — Michael Jackson

[...] I became a haver-of-authentic emotions, an openhearted, well-adjusted, and thriving person, a dependable employee, a woman who could go out to a deli and order a sandwich and eat it and read the newspaper without thinking of the sentence I AM A GROWN WOMAN, EATING OFF A PLATE, AND READING THE NEWS, because I was not an observer of myself, but a be-er of myself, a person who just WAS instead of a person who was almost. — Catherine Lacey

Most of the time now we settle for half and I like it better. But the truth is holy, and even as I known how wrong he was, and his death useless, I tremble, for I confess that something perversely pure calls to me from his memory- not purely good, but himself purely, for he allowed himself to be wholly known and for that I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients. And yet, it is better to settle for half, it must be! And so I mourn him- I admit -with a certain ... alarm. — Arthur Miller

Don't judge my brother; he is not a book. — Melanie

All ceremony depends on symbol; and all symbols have been vulgarized and made stale by the commercial conditions of our time...Of all these faded and falsified symbols, the most melancholy example is the ancient symbol of the flame. In every civilized age and country, it has been a natural thing to talk of some great festival on which "the town was illuminated." There is no meaning nowadays in saying the town was illuminated...The whole town is illuminated already, but not for noble things. It is illuminated solely to insist on the immense importance of trivial and material things, blazoned from motives entirely mercenary...It has not destroyed the difference between light and darkness, but it has allowed the lesser light to put out the greater...Our streets are in a permanent dazzle, and our minds in a permanent darkness. — G.K. Chesterton

Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave. — Markus Zusak

There is always need for good foster parents, people who have room in their homes, the openhearted people. — Antwone Fisher

Rescuers tended to be decisive, fast-thinking, risk-taking, independent, adventurous, openhearted, rebellious, and unusually flexible - able to switch plans, abandon habits, or change ingrained routines at a moment's notice. They tended to be nonconformists, and though many rescuers held solemn principles worth dying for, they didn't regard themselves as heroic. — Diane Ackerman

A person who is impartial, fair, calm, gentle, serene, accepting, and openhearted is indeed a refuge. — Karen Armstrong