This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt is to recall profound/ witty/ [insert your chosen adjective] things that book characters have said. It made me think of quotes that have seemed miraculous to me, full of insight and capable of bringing great healing. I call them “talisman” quotes.
1 / Your Sacred Friend
“When someone who I have given a great deal to
And who has been a source of great hope
Betrays and insults me,
May I regard him as a great sacred friend.”
~ Shantideva (as quoted in The Anger Diet by Brenda Shoshanna)
2 / Perfect as you are
“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, We Are the Builders of Our Fortunes: Success through Self-Reliance
3 / Endings are new beginnings
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”
~ Louis L’Amour, Lonely on the Mountain
4 / Searching for happiness
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana: The Realisation of Life
5 / All your conflicts
“Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else. The part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself.
… That part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up, it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.”
~ A.H. Almaas, The Diamond Heart Series
6 / On difficult choices
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
7 / Your Deepest Fear
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
~ Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
8 / To be free
“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
~ Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
9 / On Forgiveness
The falling Sandal-Tree sheds fragrance round,
Perfumes the axe that fells it to the ground;
Some through their tortured trunks, a balm supply,
And to give life to their destroyer — die.
~ Attributed to Persian poet Saadi Shirazi (13th century)
10 / Master thyself
“Knowing others is wisdom.
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force.
Mastering the self needs strength.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Did these talisman quotes strike a chord for you too? What quotable quotes have you been thinking of, this Tuesday?
(Full Disclaimer: I have picked these talisman quotes from various books over the years, so I may not be quoting the original source book correctly. If you know the correct original source, please do drop a comment. Thanks!)
One reply on “Ten Talisman Quotes”
That Maya Angelou quote is great.