Quotes & Sayings About Things That Are 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

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. — Patrick Ness

Remember that the most important things in life are free. All you need is the peace of mind to enjoy them. — Celso Cukierkorn

So, let me get this straight
You want me to stop being a lesbian and being attracted to women because it is a 'sin'? Last time I checked, when you lie you are sinning. Sure, I could tell you I am no longer a lesbian or that I am no longer attracted to women and am straight, or I could even tell you the moon is made of cheese. I could tell you many things, but the moon will still not be made of cheese, and I will still not be attracted to men. I could tell you a lie in order to placate you, but isn't the truth supposed to set me free? I choose truth over lies any day of the week. — Cristina Marrero

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

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

I think things that contribute to the destruction of our free-incentive system are wrong. A trend against that free-incentive system is wrong, and should only be temporarily engaged in, in the event that war or something of that kind requires it. Otherwise, it should be reduced. — George M. Humphrey

Last weekend, grandad and I sat on the porch in silence at sunset.
We admired the grapes hanging on the vines. Time passed and it did not matter. That moment was precious, that moment was to be cherished. That moment was a healer. That moment was rich, comfortable and words were unneeded. We had each other sitting side by side and the luxury of a moment lived in its full presence. That is all that mattered.

The best things in life are really free. — Ana Ortega

The general consent of all that sect is that God (by his foreknowledge, counsel, and wisdom) has no assured election, neither yet any certain reprobation, but that every man may elect or reprobate himself by his own free will, which he has (say they) to do good or evil ... [All these things are] forged by their own brains, and polished by the finest of their wits, when yet in very deed they are but the rotten heresies of ... Pelagius, long ago confuted by Augustine ... — John Knox

If you had always been free to learn, you would follow your natural tendency to find out as fully as possible about the things that interest you, cars or stars. We are born with what they call "love of learning" — Grace Llewellyn

Rwanda is a very open and free country. Key to our recovery as a nation has a range of grassroots, citizen-centered polices we call "homegrown solutions." The idea that Rwanda is highly controlled from the center belies the reality, which is that citizens in every village have a powerful say in how things get done. We prize accountability and Rwandans are quickly adapting themselves to the possibilities of a digital economy. — Paul Kagame

They may look grown-up," she continued, "but it's a disguise. It's just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won't let them. They'd like to shake off every chain the world's put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day. They'd like to feel free, and know that there's a momma and daddy at home who'll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can't be hurt. — Robert McCammon

It's a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructable in our wake, and at the same time, are drawn to things that kill: whiskey and cigarette, unprotected sex and deep fried burritos.
It's true that you can get away with drinking and smoking and sunbathing when you're in your teens and twenties, and it's true that rock stars are free to die at twenty-nine, but a lit star needs a long life. — Ariel Gore

Lord, I lift up to You my deepest fears and ask that You would deliver me from them. Set me free from all dread and anxiety about the things that frighten me. Thank You that in Your presence all fear is gone. Thank You that in the midst of Your perfect love, all fear in me is dissolved. You are greater than anything I face. — Stormie O'martian

You can't ignore the reality that faith and family, those two things are integral parts of having limited government, lower taxes, and free societies. — Rick Santorum

But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase. — Tove Jansson

For the anarch, things are not so simple, especially when he has a background in history. If he remains free of being ruled, whether by sovereigns or by society, this does not mean that he refuses to serve in any way. In general, he serves no worse than anyone else, and sometimes even better, if he likes the game. He only holds back from the pledge, the sacrifice, the ultimate devotion. These are issues of metaphysical integrity ... — Ernst Junger

If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts, or ego. You were designed to worship God and if you fail to worship Him, you will create other things (idols) to give your life to. You are free to choose, what you surrender to but you are not free from the consequence of that choice. — Rick Warren

Sendak's 1963 classic 'Where The Wild Things Are' has long been a favorite of mine because of the creative imagery, fantastic adventures and, most of all, because of how this timeless story shows us that children need to be free to roam, explore and invent in order to understand their place in the world that surrounds them. — Darell Hammond

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

And where are the other gentry that were taken? - the real leaders of this plaguey rebellion. Grey's case explains their absence, I think. They are wealthy men that can ransom themselves. Here awaiting the gallows are none but the unfortunates who followed; those who had the honor to lead them go free. It's a curious and instructive reversal of the usual way of things. Faith, it's an uncertain world entirely! — Rafael Sabatini

When I asked Richard Branson if he felt luck played a part in his success, he answered, "Yes, of course, we are all lucky. If you live in a free society, you are lucky. Luck surrounds us every day; we are constantly having lucky things happen to us, whether you recognize it or not. I have not been any more lucky or unlucky than anyone else. The difference is when luck came my way, I took advantage of it." Ah, spoken like a man knighted with wisdom. While we're on the topic, it's my belief that the old adage we often hear - "Luck is when opportunity meets preparation" - isn't enough. I believe there are two other critical components to "luck. — Darren Hardy

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

Do you know of the uncertainty principle, Marjorie?" "I am educated," she snorted, very much annoyed with him. "Then you know that with very small things, we cannot both know where they are and what they are doing. The act of observing them always changes what they are doing. Perhaps God does not look at us individually because to do so would interrupt our work, interfere with our free will ... . — Sheri S. Tepper

Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired. — Noam Chomsky

There're too many people in the world like you," Yoshio said. "Too many people who don't have anyone they care about. Who think if they don't love anyone else then they're free to do whatever they want. They think they have nothing to lose, and that makes them stronger. If you have nothing to lose, there's nothing you really want, either. You're full of confidence, and look down on people who lose things, who want things, who are happy, or sad sometimes. But that's not the way things are. And it's just not right. — Shuichi Yoshida

Pastor Ted and other evangelical pastors I hear about in the media seem to perceive just about everything to be a threat against Christianity. Evolution is a threat. Gay marriage is a threat. A swear word uttered accidentally on television is a threat. Democrats are a threat. And so on.
I don't see how any of these things pose a threat against Christianity. If someone disagrees with you about politics, or social issues, or the matter of origins, isn't that just democracy and free speech in action? How do opposing viewpoints constitute a threat? — Hemant Mehta

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

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

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

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

As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that 'freedom' is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose and read, think and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom, which we Americans enjoy, is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny. — Walt Disney Company

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

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

Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to image things differently, to make art. The more I prize Gotama's teachings free from the matrix of Indian religious thought in which they are entrenched and the more I come to understand how his own life unfolded in the context of his times, the more I discern a template for living that I can apply at this time in this increasingly secular and globalized world. — Stephen Batchelor

Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize. It's the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize, and if you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. So if you could take the free cash flow, that's something that investors can spend. Investors can't spend percentage margins. — Jeff Bezos

The things I carry are my thoughts. That's it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened. — Kamal Ravikant

There is no one who has no leisure time at all. The office is not a permanent sanctuary, and Sundays are an institution. Thus, in principle, during those beautiful hours of free time everyone would have the opportunity to rouse himself into real boredom. But although one wants to do nothing, things are done to one: the world makes sure that one does not find oneself. And even if one perhaps isn't interested in it, the world itself is much too interested for one to find the peace and quiet necessary to be as thoroughly bored with the world as it ultimately deserves. — Siegfried Kracauer

CPUs. Cayce Pollard Units. That's what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without human intervention.
What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remorseless paring-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She's a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult. — William Gibson

Such was, and is, and will be the nature of the universe, and it isn't possible that things should come into being in any other way than they do at present; and not only have human beings participated in the process of change and transformation along with all the other creatures that live on the earth, but also those beings that are divine, and, by Zeus, even the four elements, which are changed and transformed upwards and downwards, as earth becomes water, and water air, and air is transformed in turn into ether. If someone endeavours to turn his mind towards these things, and to persuade himself to accept of his own free will what must necessarily come about, he will live a very balanced and harmonious life. — Epictetus

Our excessive possessions are not making us happy. Even worse, they are taking us away from the things that do. Once we let go of the things that don't matter, we are free to pursue all the things that really do matter. — Joshua Becker

There are times when you've personally known things to misfire
the sentence that fell badly, the dull gift, slapdash comment, hobbled punch line, tight-fisted tip
trying to be too stupid, trying to be too clever, too silly, too carefree, too caring, too free. You can think back to those long and hollow pauses when you realised that you'd misjudged a mood, weren't paying attention, had taken the wrong risk. — A. L. Kennedy

Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other's bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all. — Antonin Artaud

Lord, why was it his child you gave to me? Why did you send me here to this man so that I remember the things done to me? Shimei interceded and brought me to you, and you healed me. Now, I see Atretes and feel the old wounds reopened. Hold me fast, Father. Don't let me slip; don't let me fall. Don't let me think as I used to think or live as I used to live. "Life is cruel, Atretes, but you have a choice. Choose forgiveness and be free." "Forgiveness!" The word came out of the dark shadows like a curse. "There are some things in this world that can never be forgiven." Her eyes burned with tears. "I once felt the same way, but it turns back on you and eats you alive. When Christ saved me, everything changed. The world didn't look the same." "The world doesn't change." "No. The world didn't. I did." He — Francine Rivers

Here is the difference between Oscar Wilde and me. For all the tortures he suffered, for all the ugliness of being punished for loving men, nobody read his lines and asked him: What does your husband think of that? Jail, exile
these were his lot. But never, What does your husband think?
Women may have the vote, but they are not free as long as that reaction erupts. Even those without husbands are judged as if they had offended them merely by writing the truth.
So immovable is the wall around a woman's freedom that she can't do a things without being asked to think of its effect upon some man who is presumed to be more important than she. — Erica Jong

Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in the free market. But it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, of mutual responsibility. The idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. Americans know this. We know that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things we do better together. — Barack Obama

Many people think that love represents chains, bondage, the opposite of freedom. But people who believe such things are simple-minded creatures who have been lied to, and who easily accept the general trend of the lie. It is in fact love that is the only thing powerful enough to set one free from even the most deeply-embedded and thoroughly-wound chains of the soul, the mind, and the body. The fact is that we are born into chains and born into bondages; these things are put upon us by fear, pain and doubt. When you are thoroughly loved by someone in mind and in heart, this has the power to set you so free, more free than you have ever been before. And that is because freedom is not the equivalent of detachment. Freedom is the equivalent of that which sets you free. And when someone loves you the way that only they can, that is what sets you free. — C. JoyBell C.

Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should turn to those inner things - call them what you will - I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Nothing is predetermined for us, and yet all our possible choices are threads in the vast weave of things, so that we have free will even though the consequences of our will are predictable. — Dean Koontz

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.
If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'
It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. — C.S. Lewis

I don't know, people take chances on stage. It's a big free speech zone, a comedy show. So sometimes things happen, you say things that are a little bit off the edge. — Drew Carey

The scriptures remind us, 'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' (John 8:32.) Our job is to search for the full truth and apply it in our lives. Though we are free to act, we are not free to decide what is right or wrong. That was determined eons ago. We can scoff at sacred things, rationalize our behavior, spout our own ideas, agree or disagree, but it doesn't change anything. We cannot alter God's laws, his truth. We can choose to use truth wisely and reach our goal, or we can refuse to learn truth, to live it, and then pay the inevitable penalty. — Elaine Cannon

The young are right if they have little confidence in the ideas which rule most of their elders. But they are mistaken or misled when they believe that these are still the liberal ideas of the nineteenth century, which, in fact, the younger generation hardly knows. We have little right to feel in this respect superior to our grandfathers; and we should never forget that it is we, the twentieth century, and not they, who have made a mess of things.
If in the first attempt to create a world of free men we have failed, we must try again. The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century. — Friedrich Hayek

Christian consciousness experiences itself in a curious sense as LIBERATED TO FAIL, without intolerable damage to self-esteem and without any reduction of moral seriousness. We are free to be inadequate, free to foul things up, and yet affirm ourselves in a more basic sense than the secular moralist or humanistic idealist (who can affirm themselves only on the basis of merits and accomplishments. We are free to choose and deny finite values, free to take constructive guilt upon us and to see it as an inevitable and providentially given aspect of our fallen human condition.
All that we have said leads us to the pinnacle of this good news: In Jesus Christ we need no longer be guilty before God. It is only before our clay-footed gods that we stand guilty! — Thomas C. Oden

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

We never actually listen to anything because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know, so listening becomes extraordinarily difficult. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

There are some things in the world we can't change- gravity, entropy, the speed of light, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere. — David Suzuki

Whatever your difficulties - a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness - you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do - despite your circumstances - are to be present and to be willing to love. — Jack Kornfield

She watched his throat move, and then, he reached out and touched her face. "You sure are pretty," he said. "It's the stone," she replied immediately. Her skin felt warm; his fingertip touched just the very edge of her mouth. "It's flattering." Adam gently pulled the stone out of her hand and a set it on the floorboards between them. Through his ingers he threaded one of the flyaway hairs by her cheek. "My mother used to say, 'Don't throw compliments away, so long as they're free." HIs face was very earnest. "That one wasn't mean tho cost you anything, Blue." Blue plucked at the hem on her dress, but she didn't look away from him. "I don't know what to say when you say things like that." "You can tell me if you want me to keep saying them." She was torn by the desire to encourage him and the fear of where it would lead. "I like when you say things like that." Adam asked, "But what?" "I didn't say but." "You meant to. I heard it. — Maggie Stiefvater

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

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

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

Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance. — Margaret Atwood

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

I think that, generally, people of the world typify a "free and wild" person as someone who's uprooted, detached and uninhibited. But I don't believe in that kind of freedom. I think that's an infantile concept. Freedom means something when it has escaped something! Those people who escaped things - their inner cages, cages set by others around them - when those people are able to roam free and say, "This is who I am because this is who I choose to be", THAT is freedom. Freedom isn't being stupid; freedom is being so smart that you develop a strength strong enough to break free and become your own person. A better person than what your circumstances would like to define you as. — C. JoyBell C.

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

The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer to people. Wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. That is the crux of the whole matter. — Thomas Merton

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

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

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

Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant venomous things that are said but, on the whole, we would rather lump them than do away with them. — Winston Churchill

People like him think you can apologize things away, that you can confess over and over until you are free to repeat your crime. — Philipp Meyer

... 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

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

There are things in this life that are free yet priceless. Smiles, kindness, hugs and love are all free to give but priceless to receive. — Heather Wolf

So I got to thinking that perhaps that's what money is: a crystallization - or, rather, a homogenization - of time and free will into those things we call dollars and pounds and yen and euros. Money multiplies your time. It also expands your agency and broadens the number of things you can do accordingly. Big-time lottery winners haven't won ten million dollars - they've won ten thousand person-years of time to do pretty much anything they want anywhere on Earth. Windfalls are like the crystal meth version of time and free will. — Douglas Coupland

You cannot expect the man who made this shield to live easily under the rule of man who worked the sheath of this dagger ... You are the builders of coursed stone walls, the makers of straight roads and ordered justice and disciplined troops. We know that, we know it all too well. We know that your justice is more sure than ours, and when we rise against you, we see our hosts break against the discipline of your troops, as the sea breaks against a rock. And we do not understand, because all these things are the ordered pattern, and only the free curves of the shield-boss are real to us. We do not understand. And when the time comes that we begin to understand your world, too often we lose the understanding of our own. — Rosemary Sutcliff

I have been motivated by this idea since I was a kid that if we invented machines that were created in the way that people are - were aware, have free will, inventive machines, machines that would be geniuses - potentially, they could reinvent themselves. They're not just applying it to other things - they could actually redesign themselves. — David Hanson

The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things that are worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing , but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.
Now if you will excuse me I have to drive to Vermont and collect some mail from a Mr. Bubba. — Bill Bryson

If we are still suffering, how can we teach other to be free? Ajahn Chah replied, 'First of all, be very honest. Don't pretend that you are wise in ways you are not. Tell people how you are yourself. And then take the measure of things. In weightlifting, if you're strong, you know that through practice you can lift a really big weight. Maybe you've seen someone lift a weight bigger than you can. You can tell your students, 'If you practice, you can lift that big weight, but don't try it yet. I can't even do it, but I've seen people do it.' Be willing to express what is possible without trying to fool someone that you've done it. — Jack Kornfield

In front of us there is an immense garden of words and non-words, a serre, that is, a greenhouse in which are preserved by my care so many things of speech you have given me while leaving me free to cultivate them. — Helene Cixous

I have hair that drifts like seaweed when I swim. I have eyes that shine like rock pools. My ears are like scallop shells. The ripples on my skin are like the ripples on the sand when the tide has turned back again. At night I gleam and glow like sea beneath the stars and moon. Thoughts dart and dance inside like little minnows in the shallows. They race and flash like mackerel farther out. My wonderings roll in the deep like sails. Dreams dive each night into the dark like dolphins do and break out happy and free into the morning light. These are the things I know about myself and that I see when I look in the rock pools at myself. — David Almond

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

In life most things that frighten us are to do with our own heart and its flaws. You'll always be afraid of some things - never free from fear itself. But that's all right. Fear's like pain, it's there in your life to teach you about yourself. — Lisa Ballantyne

I found out that total creativity involves a certain intellectual rebellion - not to become a criminal, but somehow. to be totally creating, you have to do things that are a little bit forbidden. You have to feel free, and we know freedom is a hard thing to get. — Philippe Petit

Free healthcare and free and equal education and peace are about the only things I passionately believe in, and I think if you don't believe in those but you go to church on Sunday then that's hypocris. — Robert Montgomery

It seems to me that after someone sweeps across your life like a red-hot flame, peeling back the shutters that sat over your heart and your mind and setting free your sweetest dreams or your worst nightmares, after things cool down you've got two choices. You can either slip back into your old self, your old life, tucking those things you were too scared to look at back into hiding, or you can keep those parts of yourself out until you get so used to them that they don't scare you anymore and they just become a part of who you are. — Sandra Kring

Freedom is the realization that everything and everybody gets to be exactly as they are. Unless we've come to that point, unless we've seen that this is how reality sees things, then we're actually withholding freedom from the world. We're seeing it as a possession, and we're only concerned with ourselves. How good I can feel? How free I can feel? True freedom is a gift to everything and everybody. — Adyashanti

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

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

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

The thing that most distresses me is whenever I see things over sexualized, I worry about young girls. Some of the fall out of the feminist movement is that it made younger and younger girls more sexually available. It's part of the philosophy, be your own person and be free. But, girls are so over sexualized in this culture. — Lily Tomlin

I didn't have a perfect model, but I wanted to try to blend my own personal reflections and experiences with this broader canvas to see how a lot of the narratives we have about economy and foreign policy got stuck. Because we have these categories of liberal, conservative, free marketer, open government - all these stereotypes about our politics and the categories we try to put things in are inadequate to this sort of complex, ambiguous, sometimes contradictory experience we have as ordinary people and that I have as an elected official. — Barack Obama

The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again. — Anne Lamott

I had learned that some people feel that books are "intrusive," in the sense that books put things in their heads that they don't want there. Some people call these things "ideas." Maybe they're right. Sometimes these ideas sprout into what are known as "thoughts," and you know my feelings about school, government, and big businesses
thoughts are the last things they want rattling around inside people's heads because thoughts inevitably lead to consumer protection, free speech and hippies. — Gary Reilly

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

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

People have called it different things over the years, fight, attitude, determination, but I've always called it hope. The simple truth is, though they abused your body, what they did in no way diminished your power. You are not less because of what happened to you, if anything you are more. You have gained a strength many will never have, a resiliency unknown before, and while you will always fight the demons that now have free range inside of you, you will do it with skills and power few can share. — Kim Schubert