Quotes & Sayings About Things For Free

When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because, striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes. — Hermann Hesse

Pandas and rain forests are never mentioned when it comes to the millions of people taking joyrides in their Range Rovers. Rather, it's the little things we're strong-armed into conserving. At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES - CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, reading YOU WASTE NAPKINS - YOU WASTE TREES!!! The cups, of course, are also made of paper, yet there's no mention of the mighty redwood when you order your four-dollar coffee. The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free. — David Sedaris

The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees; I want money. — John Lennon

She would be free of mundane care, she was a pure will towards right. She had sold herself, but she had a new freedom. She had got rid of her body. She had sold a lower thing, her body, for a higher thing, her freedom from material things. — D.H. Lawrence

We are not perfectly free until we live in pure hope. For when our hope is pure, it no longer trusts exclusively in human and visible means, nor rests in any visible end. He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination. — Thomas Merton

Given our obsession with self, it is hardly surprising we think it is fine for us to live in a world with malleable moral markers, as long as we get our own way without being bullied by others into accepting their way of doing things. We want others to respect moral boundaries that we want to be free to ignore when it suits. — Stephen McAndrew

In alien lands I keep the body
Of ancient native rites and things:
I gladly free a little birdie
At celebration of the spring.
I'm now free for consolation,
And thankful to almighty Lord:
At least, to one of his creations
I've given freedom in this world! — Alexander Pushkin

Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherJ ished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a land where there has been no contest for the office of president for more than a generation, where the executive rules all things by means of a standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed price. I found Mexico to be a land where the people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands. — John Kenneth Turner

After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words "my" and "mine" never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal. — A.W. Tozer

While there exist many cultures and sub-cultures on Earth, they all can be understood by a simple equation. The males will do whatever it takes to acquire physical intimacy from the females. In cultures where the females require education, career, and a house, the men work to acquire those things. In cultures where the women require bravado, pride, and a propensity for violence, the men acquire those traits. And in cultures where the females require nothing, the men do that, too. The fact that many females give away sex for free then wonder why the men in their lives do not show more ambition has been submitted as evidence in Alliance court that humans lack sufficient intelligence to be considered sentient. — Aaron Lee Yeager

We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my speculation which justifies it; I espouse movement, which changes me into a generator of being, into an artisan of fictions, while my cosmogonic verve makes me forget that, led on by the whirlwind of acts, I am nothing but an acolyte of time, an agent of decrepit universes. ( ... )
If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity. — Emil Cioran

It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the best, and that is your leisure - the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below. — James A. Garfield

King David had a ring with an inscription on it: 'All things pass.' When one is sad those words make one cheerful, and when one is cheerful it makes one sad. I have got myself a ring like that with Hebrew letters on it, and this talisman keeps me from infatuations. All things pass, life will pass, one wants nothing. Or at least one wants nothing but the sense of freedom, for when anyone is free, he wants nothing, nothing, nothing. — Anton Chekhov

Folks, if you give people things for free, don't blame them for taking them. — Rob Woodall

Curiously, a principle affects your life whether you are aware of it or not. For instance, the principle of gravity was working long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head. But once it did, and he understood it, then we as a society were free to harness this principle to create, among other things, airline flight. — Andy Andrews

In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior ... — Thomas Harris

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was greatly excited at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive a gift in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe ... I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. — Annie Dillard

More importantly, I didn't know then that one day I would genuinely be free. That freedom came out of a thousand small steps of obedience, most of which I took during the waiting or limbo time. The more I learned to lean into Him on a daily basis and simply live out my faith in the everyday elements, the more I was prepared for the bigger steps when they arrived. Not only that, I was given the gift of living my life fully in the present, rather than being fixated and frustrated over some distant time or hope. In the crossroads called limbo, you do arrive at mile markers. You become more mature. More healed. Less surprised by or resistant to or unprepared for the good things God is giving you in the ordinary. Your challenge is to begin to embrace the waiting times as part of the overall journey. Limbo is a key part of the healing process! As you are faithful daily, He is working in you powerfully, and it all counts. Every single moment! — Suzanne Eller

He that loveth, flieth, runneth, and rejoiceth. He is free, and cannot be held in. He giveth all for all, and hath all in all, because he resteth in one highest above all things, from whom all that is good flows and proceeds. — Thomas A Kempis

I held Carlito's hands in mine, my fingers wedged between the cuffs and his wrists because I hoped that at least for a moment he would feel me and not the cold metal against his skin. Those are things to which he'd become too accustomed. I saw it in his posture. The way the years of walking with his hands chained to his waist, his ankles shackled together by leg irons, had sloped his spine, causing him to walk with his head tilted down, in short steps, so different from the way he moved when he was free, with rhythm in his gait, a walk more like a glide — Patricia Engel

Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith ... include the following: that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He's dead, Annie. But as long as you haven't dealt with the memories of the things he has done to you, he'll live on. We'll always have to face these times when you think he's returned for you. You'll never be free." It — Lisa Unger

It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. — Oscar Wilde

You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play. — Erik Erikson

It was one thing to have your own kind of hope, an ember you could nurture inside, something to inspire you when things got dark. If it died, it was on you; no one else even had to know about it, and you were free to reignite it, or to give up and walk away. But when you were carrying it with another person, for another person, it was a dangerous dream. Treacherous as the sea, yet fragile as a bubble. — Sarah Ockler

I decided I would open this little actors' workshop I always told actors to look for. That gave me something to do on Wednesday nights, and after about a year of that, I realized that some of the things I was saying to actors probably had broader application. I ran into a magazine called 'Speakers For Free.' — Robert Forster

When I lost my faith in people I put my trust in things To avoid the disappointment Trusting people brings ... I tried to do it all myself then Surrounded by my stuff All I found were limitations I could not rise above There are gadgets and contraptions Immaculate machines There's a program you can download now That will even dream your dreams It'll even dream you dreams For a monthly fee Clear up your complexion You get a hundred hours free Possessions cannot save you. — John Gorka

Jasper!' said Katie. 'Your machine was supposed to be making duplicate copies of all of the things that were photocopied during the week!'
Yes indeed. And so it did.' He flung open a panel. 'All ingeniously copied and transcribed onto one convenient wax roll, quite easily carried between the three of us.' He hefted one end of the wax roll; it was as big as a carpet. 'Come along. It's a mere two hundred and twenty pounds. Try to keep one hand free for making fists. We may have to bash our way out of here. — M T Anderson

The thing about me loving Harry is I'm twelve and he's maybe thirty or thirty-five, whatever, so he'll have to wait like six years for me to grow up. I mean if he kills Hiskott and sets us free, he'll have to wait. He'll never do that. As kind and sweet and brave as he is, he probably has a girl already a hundred others chasing after him. So what I'll have to do is always love him from afar. Unrequited love. That's what they generally call it. I'll love him forever in a deeply, deeply sad kind of way, which maybe you think sounds pretty depressing, but it isn't. Being obsessed about a deeply sad unrequited love can take your mind off the worse things, of which there are thousands, and sometimes it's better to dwell endlessly on what you can't have than on what might happen to you at any moment in Harmony corner. — Dean Koontz

It's a matter of seeing the original meaning of all things. The world is full of all kinds of meanings. But our minds are so fettered by the lies and falsehoods they make for themselves, that they cannot see the beauty, goodness, or truth of those meanings. Only a mind that has become free can see such things ... — Yi Mun-Yol

Deep down, we all have our dark thoughts, Kathy. Mine are no different than any others. My life was planned for me, like my body was engineered to be what it is, a Prime Elite. But underneath it all I am still a man. Though I did not want this bonding at the beginning, it is now a part of me . . . and a part of you. We will work things out, my wife and we will do it together, that is what I accept. Also," he adjusted his arm around her, feeling her discomfort. "I know that without you there is an emptiness that I cannot put into words. It is an emptiness that I will not live with. Thus, I do not wish to be free of you . . . ever. — K.L. Tharp

The history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood. — Amos Bronson Alcott

Casting back her head, Arya gazed up at the twinkling sky, her long neck gold with firelight, her face pale with the radiance of the heavenx. "Do you ask out of friendly concern or your own self-interest?" She gave an abrupt, choked laugh, the sound of water falling over cold rocks. "Never mind. The night air has addled me. It has undone my sense of courtesy and left me free to say the most spiteful things that occur to me."
"No matter."
"It does matter, because I regret it, and I shall not tolerate it. Did I love Faolin? How would you define love? For over twenty years, we traveled together, the only immortals to walk among the short-lived races. We were companions ... and friends. — Christopher Paolini

Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too serious. He was only thirty-three, after all, and might want to martyr himself for other people. — Thomm Quackenbush

If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name — Anne Carson

The mind wants to land, to fixate, to hold a concept, but the only way you can be really free is by not fixating. That's part of true maturity, and it's one of the hardest things for spiritual people who have had true and powerful revelations to go through - to accept the degree of surrender needed to literally let go of all experience and all self-reference. Even in great revelations, there is almost always something that wants to claim, "I am this." Every time you claim, "I am this", you just claimed another sense perception, thought, emotion, or feeling. — Adyashanti

At the end of the day, no amount of investing, no amount of clean electrons, no amount of energy efficiency will save the natural world if we are not paying attention to it - if we are not paying attention to all the things that nature give us for free: clean air, clean water, breathtaking vistas, mountains for skiing, rivers for fishing, oceans for sailing, sunsets for poets, and landscapes for painters. What good is it to have wind-powered lights to brighten the night if you can't see anything green during the day? Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value. — Thomas L. Friedman

To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. — William Shakespeare

Jimmy Mack said she had Gone-into-Teaching because it was the only place where she could rule without reprisal; where she could give free rein to the awesome dimension of her need to crush things. Mr. Conheedy it seemed had enjoyed this for the first three months of their marriage, but then had run off, Nan said to try and find a female Mrs. Conheedy next time around. — Niall Williams

Focus.
Such a little word for such a hard thing and yet it can make things so simple, unless you break it. Like glass.
Fragile on certain points with enough pressure ore carelessness, but if handled correctly, it's useful, clear, sharp, and perfect.
That's what I will try to think about, whenever the Beast in me is not in agreement with what I am doing, or how I am behaving, when it threatens to break free, through that very same glass that separates us.
I need to be exactly like this window: smooth, cool, strong, and impenetrable.
Focus. — D.S. Wrights

My model, such as it is, is a mentorship model, which is to say that I care personally, and I involve myself personally/emotionally with the work of each student, and I try to make it such that they want to reach for more, do better, risk more, try new things, abandon limited objectives, individuate, and so on. For me it is personal, to the best of my ability, and it is about making more of the writer and of the writer's task in each case. I also think it's possible to do this, to teach in this way, in a classroom free of rancor and backbiting and competitive jostling. So: my class should be a place of peace, a place where anything is possible, where the code of realism is in disrepute, and the worst thing you can say, the absolutely verboten thing, is the phrase: The New Yorker. — Rick Moody

The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding. Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished, but of changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. When we understand the nature of desire, when we investigate it closely with keen attention, desire falls away by itself, without need for struggle. — Bhikkhu Bodhi

Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty" to remain independent of the enslavement of the material world. "Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem - how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He'd read a poem many years before called "The Death-Self," and he hadn't understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he'd put into holding things together - Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself - was coming free. He'd shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He'd started - only started - to realize that he'd actually fallen in love with the object of his search after he knew for certain that he'd lost her. He'd seen unequivocally that the chaos he'd dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in. — James S.A. Corey

there is no life free of pain, loss, despair, confusion, violence, and, yes, even death. To make it a goal to think you could ever live a life that avoided all these things is pure folly, and you can only fall short. What there is, however, is the ability to manage one's way through these things so that, in addressing them, you remain as whole as possible, as present as possible, as undaunted as possible. For that is the closest you are ever gonna get to real, real contentment. — Ron Perlman

No, you have not, so as not to add to what has already been said once, and so as not to deprive people of freedom, for which you stood so firmly when you were on earth. Anything you proclaim anew will encroach upon the freedom of men's faith, for it will come as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was the dearest of all things to you, even then, one and a half thousand years ago. Was it not you who so often said then:"I want to make you free"?18 — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There's never a mistake in the universe. So if your partner is angry, good. If there are things about him that you consider flaws, good, because these flaws are your own, you're projecting them, and you can write them down, inquire, and set yourself free. People go to India to find a guru, but you don't have to: you're living with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom. — Byron Katie

God teaches those who come to him in another manner without interior speech or action. It takes place with such secrecy that the soul itself does not know it at the time, nor until it sees itself growing in discretion, and in knowledge of how to direct its own and other people's affairs prudently It also understands many things in Holy Scripture that it could not comprehend before, though it knows not whence this knowledge came. I think that God treats these people as we treat thrushes and birds that we teach; but they know they are learning. This way of learning is excellent if free from presumption and combined with faith and right reason. However, there is danger in great unrestraint, for it is hateful that a man should concern himself with what is beyond him. — Francisco De Osuna

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency. — Khaled Hosseini

What I do see in New York and I am amazed is how many rich women will complain about the cost of something and get things for free.I would never want to be like them, but I can see why they save money. — Dana Perino

In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price.
You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple. — Ellis Peters

What do we plant when we plant a tree?
A thousand things that we daily see,
We plant the spire that out-towers the crag,
We plant the staff for our country's flag;
We plant the shade from the hot sun free,
We plant all these when we plant the tree. — Henry Abbey

Tom's words laid bare the hearts of the trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. — J.R.R. Tolkien

There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve. — Lidia Yuknavitch

The problem isn't that you haven't run far or fast enough. The problem is that you run at all. You must stop, amore, and face your demons. It is time for you to take your life into your own control and put these things down for good. That is how you will be free. — Ashly L. Evans

One of the great things about Ben & Jerry's for me is that not only is it delicious, but I get it for free. — Jerry Greenfield

For reason's measurements, which attain unto temporal things, do not attain unto things that are free from time-just as hearing does not attain unto whatever is not-audible, even though these things exist and are unattainable by hearing. — Nicholas Of Cusa

But they have preserved an aspect of the American persona that is uniquely vital to the health of this republic. Among many other things, those dirtbag river runners uphold the virtue of disobedience: the principle that in a free society, defiance for its own sake sometimes carries value and meaning, if only because power in all of its forms - commercial, governmental, and moral - should not always and without question be handed what it demands. — Kevin Fedarko

It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor. — Stephen King

We don't often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. — Emma Watson

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant. — Mark Twain

Personally, I was never more passionate about manga than when preparing for my college entrance exams. It's a period of life when young people appear to have a great deal of freedom, but are in many ways actually opressed. Just when they find themselves powerfully attracted to members of opposite sex, they have to really crack the books. To escape from this depressing situation, they often find themselves wishing they could live in a world of their own - a world they can say is truly theirs, a world unknown even to their parents. To young people, anime is something they incorporate into this private world.
I often refer to this feeling as one yearning for a lost world. It's a sense that although you may currently be living in a world of constraints, if you were free from those constraints, you would be able to do all sorts of things. And it's that feeling, I believe, that makes mid-teens so passionate about anime. — Hayao Miyazaki

In life things are only free after you've paid for them. — T.A. Uner

Yet are you so certain, good mistress, you wish to be free of this mist? Is it not better some things remain hidden from our minds?"
"It may be for some, father, but not for us. Axl and I wish to have again the happy moments we shared together. To be robbed of them is as if a thief came in the night and took what's most precious from us."
"Yet the mist covers all memories, the bad as well as the good. Isn't that so, mistress?"
"We'll have the bad ones come back too, even if they make us weep or shake with anger. For isn't it the life we've shared? — Kazuo Ishiguro

... of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines ... Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred ... As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is ... a faith that ... has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. — David Bentley Hart

Every day I strive to get to a place where I'm not effected by the external world, and I don't use the external world to define or tell me who I am. I strive for a state of equanimity and calm and a state of grace, so I can be free of definitions. If you are free, then you can create beautiful things. It's really just shutting out the noise. — Laurel Holloman

I think we have a free will, and at the same moment we don't. We have to live with that. It doesn't make sense intellectually, but that's because our intellect is always trying to come up with a logical, rational explanation for things. To do that, it puts labels on things. But once you label something, you've got twoness. You've got the label, and you've got what you're labeling. And there is only oneness in the universe, even though we artificially believe in twoness. — Wayne Dyer

Being with you, Adrian. It's everything I've ever needed ... I feel like you love me for me. Not for what I have to offer you or what you can acquire or who you can make happy by being with me. And the things you make me feel
I thought I'd never be free to feel, so I don't regret us. I'll never be sorry for loving you. — Lynetta Halat

I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only Child of Mircea's younger, and far stranger, brother Radu, he was a first-level master
the highest and rarest vampire rank.
A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were very good at killing things. And Mircea's bug-eyed crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. The collaboration hadn't exactly been stress free, but to my surprise, we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. By the end, I'd even started to think that it was kind of nice, having someone to watch my back for a change.
Sometimes, I could be really stupid. — Karen Chance

What then, is it not possible to be free from faults? It is not possible; but this is possible: to direct your efforts incessantly to being faultess. For we must be content if by never remitting this attention we shall escape at least a few errors. When you have said "Tomorrow I will begin to attend," you must be told that you are saying this: "Today I will be shameless, disregardful of time and place, mean;it will be in the power of others to give me pain, today I will be passionate and envious.
See how many evil things you are permitting yourself to do. If it is good to use attention tomorrow, how much better is it to do so today? If tomorrow it is in your interest to attend, much more is it today, that you may be able to do so tomorrow also, and may not defer it again to the third day. — Epictetus

Yet never once in his life had he experienced the unshakable certainty that he and he alone had arrived at a decision. He always had the sense that fate had forced him to decide things to suit its own convenience. On occasion, after the momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will, mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was mean to. The only things that he had decided for himself with complete independence were the kind of trivial matters which, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to require no decision making at all. — Haruki Murakami

The pain of the narcissist is that, to him, everything is really a threat. What doesn't surrender in reverence is blasphemous to a high opinion of oneself - the burden of self-importance. The narcissist reconstructs his own law of gravity which states that all things and all creatures must adhere to his personal satisfaction, but when they do not, the pain is far more intense than it is for one who is free from the clamors of 'I'. — Criss Jami

But I say to you, the Lord says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you. Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God. — Maximus The Confessor

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. — Mao Zedong

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you're a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it's about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing charity work, painting or, in my case, writing can be a galvanizing part of the recovery process. Keeping the brain and the body active can give life a semblance of pleasure and hope. This is what writing has done for me. I took every traumatic element of my condition and channelled it into something useful. — Diriye Osman

She was a rule breaker, never settling her fierce spirit for things built of structure. — Nikki Rowe

Unless it's out of the goodness of someone's heart, I don't like having things given to me for free. I like working hard for what I earn. It gives me a sense of gratitude, and that's the only way I can truly appreciate it. — Sasha Azevedo

Only my penis is still free and happy, no good for sword fights and no good for any work, or even for hanging things on, or for digging trenches. Praise be to God that it is so. — Yehuda Amichai

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand. — Chloe Thurlow

For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god. — John O'Donohue

Now, this pair," he waved the shoes he held, "are new. They haven't been walked a mile, and for new shoes like these I charge a talent, maybe a talent and two." He pointed at my feet. "Those shoes, on the other hand, are used, and I don't sell used shoes."
He turned his back on me and started to tidy his workbench rather aimlessly, humming to himself ...
I knew that he was trying to do me a favor, and a week ago I would have jumped at the opportunity for free shoes. But for some reason I didn't feel right about it. I quietly gathered up my things and left a pair of copper jots on his stool before I left.
Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough. — Patrick Rothfuss

What do you want, Mal?" The room seemed very quiet.
"Don't ask me that."
"Why not?"
"Because it can't be."
"I want to hear it anyway."
He blew out a long breath. "Say goodnight. Tell me to leave, Alina."
"No."
"You need an army. You need a crown."
"I do."
He laughed then. "I know I'm supposed to say something noble
I want a united Ravka free from the Fold. I want the Darkling in the ground, where he can never hurt you or anyone else again." He gave a rueful shake of his head. "But I guess I'm the same selfish ass I've always been. For all my talk of vows and honor, what I really want is to put you up against that wall and kiss you until you forget you ever knew another man's name. So tell me to go, Alina. Because I can't give you a title or an army or any of the things you need. — Leigh Bardugo

I never expect appreciation. I always set a deadline for the things I have to do to be a successful person, when I complete them, I give myself a piece of candy, a glass of tea and some free time to enjoy- that is how I honor my hardworking and appreciate my struggles. — M.F. Moonzajer

To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things-this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship ... United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. — Bertrand Russell

We stand for a use of color free from the imitation of things as colored objects. We stand for an aerial vision in which the material of color is expressed in all of the manifold possibilities our subjectivity can create. — Carlo Carra

Here lies Morris, a good man and friend. He enjoyed the finer points of civilized life but never shied away from a hearty adventure or hard work. He died a free man, which is more than most people can say, if we are going to be honest about it. Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven't the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren't worth a goddamned thing, you will see what I mean. — Patrick DeWitt

Every system tries to get people to conform to support that system. That goes for communism, socialism, free enterprise, or any other civilization. If they don't demand loyalty, they can't keep their civilization together. So what they do is they teach things that would support an established system. We do not advocate an established system. TVP talks of an emergent system into state of change. So that we always prepare people for the next changes coming ahead. So that people will not cling to the past. — Jacque Fresco

With a boot on his chest, she used her free hand to search for the syringe he surely carried. Found it. Jabbed it into his thigh. Waited with the gun to his head until his eyes shut and his jaw went slack. Punched him just to be sure. The sedative would have been measured to heavily dose Neeva and her nearly half-weight to his, but at this point, what the fuck ever.
A group of pedestrians on the other side of the street had watched the entire scene. Munroe waved them on. "It's official business," she said, and whether they believed her or not, they moved on. Human nature was always more inclined to apathy, to avoiding
involvement, to seeing things as someone else's problem. People were easy like that. — Taylor Stevens

none can shake off a sense of having free will. The best we can do is to reason that we are determined based on observing the common law of causality among things in the world and applying this law to ourselves. But we cannot feel ourselves as determined. (One philosopher has said, and possibly more have thought to themselves: "Can one really believe in determinism without going insane?") Being determined in thought and deed is not experientially noticeable, only abstractly deducible. It would be impossible for someone to say "I am nothing but a human puppet. — Thomas Ligotti

[A comic book writers' union] will never happen. Someone will always be willing to write Batman for free ... You sit at a bar with an editor at a show and you see 19 people come up and pitch ideas at them. If everybody writing the top 20 books all quit and demanded, 'Union now, union forever,' those 19 guys would be getting phone calls. There will never be a union. I think things are getting better - I bet things have never been so good - but there will never be a union. — Matt Fraction

Once upon a time, my government turned my city into a police state, kidnapped me, and tortured me. When I got free, I decided that the problem wasn't the system, but who was running it. Bad guys had gotten into places of high office. We needed good apples. I worked my butt off to get people to vote for good apples. We had elections. We installed the kind of apples everyone agreed would be the kind of apples we could be proud of. They said good things. A few real dirtbags like Carrie Johnstone lost their jobs.
And then, well, the good apples turned out to act pretty much exactly like the bad apples. Oh, they had reasons. There were emergencies. Circumstances. It was all really regrettable.
But there were always emergencies, weren't there? — Cory Doctorow

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. — Seneca.

What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. — Kay Hooper

In our youths, many of us suspected that being tied down to a partner and family might constrain us. But after 40, even that landscape starts to shift. Many singletons turn inward and start longing for the things so many of us longed to be free of in our 20s. — Sandra Tsing Loh

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words. — Clarice Lispector

I liked him, there was no doubt about that. But I wasn't sure if he was good for me or not. I didn't always stick to things that were good for me - positively railed against it sometimes - but he was a different type of not good for me. He did things to my mind and body that I hadn't ever experienced before.
But it wasn't as if I could get him out of my head either: every moment I had free would suddenly be crammed with thoughts of him. His soft lips, the gentle urgency with which they'd kissed me. The intoxicating smell of his skin. His moss-green eyes that would follow everything I said, then would meet my eyes so we could share a smile. It was driving me slowly and pleasurably insane. — Dorothy Koomson

Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath
all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each? — H. Rider Haggard

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers. — David Brin

When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God's promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin's consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things. — Oscar A. Romero

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti