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Fulfillment Quotes

    “Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly. Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.” ~ David McCullough

      “The value of life can be measured by how many times your soul has been deeply stirred.”

      Soichiro Honda (via Do Nothing!)

        “Long life is indeed a blessing, but maybe we overdo our concern for the length of our lives and give insufficient attention to the passion we bring to whatever time we have.  The meaning and purpose of life are great mysteries, and in that light a very brief life, of only minutes, can be full and rounded.  The soul has appeared in the flesh; then it returns to its home of origin.”

        Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

          “Almost every day we are asked to extend the range of our acquaintance with life.  It is one of several ways to live intensely, and it is also a way to prepare for death.  For death is the ultimate stranger.  This is not necessarily a morbid thought, because only by allowing death to play a role in daily life do we really live.  Opening to another society or another individual – they are two levels of culture – we die a little death in relation to what has become familiar.  But those little deaths create openings to new life.”

          Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

            “When we are living only a portion of what a human being is capable of, our lives are incomplete.  I don’t mean that we each have to do everything possible in life, but that the more possibilities we can imagine, the richer our lives will be.  Defending ourselves against the stranger is a way of keeping out our own potentiality.  The diminishment of our acquaintances is a diminishment of ourselves.  The most challenging stranger is life itself, or the soul, the face and source of vitality.  Life is always presenting new possibilities ,and we may fear that bountifulness.  It may seem safer to be content with what we have and what we are, and so we cling to the status quo.  But in these matters there is no convenient plateau.  When we refuse a new offering of life, we develop emotional calluses.  The habit of acting from fear sets in quickly and becomes steadily more rigid.  Refusing life, we become attendants of death.”

            Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

              “Living closer to nature helps simplify because nature itself, though complex, keeps us in tune with basic rhythms and pleasures that never change and that provide grounding. When our family moved next to a farm, we found simplicity in the food we ate and in new sources for our entertainment and pleasure. Learning how to ride a horse is a complicated process, but riding is a simple pleasure that offers lasting satisfaction.”

              Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

                “Simplifying the externals allows us to cultivate a rich inner and outer life.  A cluttered existence may keep us busy, but busyness doesn’t mean that we are fully engaged in what we are going.  Usually, just the opposite, we feel busy because we are neurotically active at things that don’t matter much in the long run.  It does little good to be successful in a business that requires sixty hours of work a week, while the simple pleasures of home life are neglected.  A complicated person can simplify life and in that simplicity find a sharp articulation of values.  Complicated lives often do the opposite: they show to what extent the person is lost in the busyness of the world.”

                Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

                  “Living in the moment can become a moralistic principle, a burden rather than a way to intensify life.  The difference might depend on who takes the lead in the dance and who chooses the music.  The soul is a community of many interior persons, many of them capable leaders.  The ego is only one among them and probably should not always run the show.  A good dancer or musician allows the music to take over, becomes absorbed in the complex harmonies and tempos, and is the servant of the materials at hand.  The secret of a soul-based life is to allow someone or something other than the usual self to be in charge.”

                  Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.

                    “The most important thing for a human being is not what is between his or her ears; it is what is in his or her heart.  If the spirit is strong, one can accomplish anything.” ~ Tempu Nakamura, Budo Secrets