“We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I.
Don Juan Matus
”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“You say you need help. Help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“For an instant I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me, held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“I have no routines or personal history. One day I found out that they were no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little. If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this?”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“A warrior must focus his attention on the link between himself and his death . . .. He must let each of his acts be his last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will his acts have their rightful power.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“A hunter knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry. To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“You take yourself too seriously, " he said slowly. "You are too damn important in
your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel
justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so damn important that you can afford to
leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character.
That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited!" - Dom Juan”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“Охотник знает, что он заманит дичь в свои ловушки еще и еще, поэтому он не тревожится. Тревожиться, значит становиться доступным, безрассудно доступным. И как только ты начинаешь тревожиться, ты в отчаянии цепляешься за что-нибудь. А как только ты за что-нибудь уцепился, то ты уже обязан устать или утопить того или то, за что ты цепляешься.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“You take yourself too seriously, " he said slowly. "You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so damn important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited!" - Dom Juan”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“..there was no need to injure the shrubs, since we had already injured the quail.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from Journey to Ixtlan
“To gaze into the depths of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation.”
― Henry James, quote from The Turn of the Screw
“If you can see a thing whole," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you loose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
"That's all right for Urras. Let it stay off there and be the moon-I don't want it! But I am not going to stand up on a gravestone and look down on life and say, 'O lovely!' I want to see it whole right in the middle of it, here, now. I don't give a hoot for eternity."
"It's nothing to do with eternity," said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. "All you have to do to see life as a whole is to see it as mortal. I'll die, you'll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun's going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?"
"Ah! your talk, your damned philosophy!"
"Talk? It's not talk. It's not reason. It's hand's touch. I touch the wholeness, I hold it. Which is moonlight, which is Takver? How shall I fear death? When I hold it, when I hold in my hands the light-"
"Don't be propertarian," Takver muttered.
"Dear heart, don't cry."
"I'm not crying. You are. Those are your tears."
"I'm cold. The moonlight's cold."
"Lie down."
A great shiver went through his body as she took him in her arms.
"I'm afraid, Takver," he whispered.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Dispossessed
“I believe it stands for 'mother I'd like to...befriend,”
― Alexandra Adornetto, quote from Halo
“The worst thing that can be done to children is to drain their energy while correcting them.”
― James Redfield, quote from The Celestine Prophecy
“Anastasia, you should steer clear of me. I’m not the man for you,” he whispers.”
― E.L. James, quote from Fifty Shades Trilogy
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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