Richard Bach

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.

— Richard Bach

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.

— Richard Bach

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

— Richard Bach

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?

— Richard Bach

Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.

— Richard Bach

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

— Richard Bach

True love stories never have endings.

— Richard Bach

You teach best what you most need to learn.

— Richard Bach

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

— Richard Bach

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.

— Richard Bach

Having made the decision to love, had I chosen life instead of death?

— Richard Bach

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

— Richard Bach

We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

— Richard Bach

One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves.

— Richard Bach

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

— Richard Bach

Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, we may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.

— Richard Bach

You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.

— Richard Bach

An old maxim says that a professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit

— Richard Bach

You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.

— Richard Bach

Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.

— Richard Bach

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

— Richard Bach

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.

— Richard Bach

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.

— Richard Bach

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

— Richard Bach

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again.

— Richard Bach

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

— Richard Bach

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.

— Richard Bach

The gull sees farthest who flies highest.

— Richard Bach

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding.

— Richard Bach

But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.

— Richard Bach

If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?

— Richard Bach

The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.

— Richard Bach

You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.

— Richard Bach

The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other.

— Richard Bach

Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.

— Richard Bach

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

— Richard Bach

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

— Richard Bach

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

— Richard Bach

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

— Richard Bach

Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

— Richard Bach

Everything in this book may be wrong.

— Richard Bach

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

— Richard Bach

If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That's all there is to it.

— Richard Bach

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

— Richard Bach

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

— Richard Bach

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

— Richard Bach

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

— Richard Bach

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.

— Richard Bach

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.

— Richard Bach

Perspective— Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.

— Richard Bach

Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.

— Richard Bach

The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."

— Richard Bach

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

— Richard Bach

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

— Richard Bach

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

— Richard Bach

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

— Richard Bach

The original sin is to limit the Is. —Don't.

— Richard Bach

The simplest questions are the most profound. Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.

— Richard Bach

There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from."… "I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you.

— Richard Bach

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

— Richard Bach

We're all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the Mind, or however else you want to say it.

— Richard Bach

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

— Richard Bach

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

— Richard Bach

You teach best what you most need to learn.

— Richard Bach

You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy.

— Richard Bach

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

— Richard Bach

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

— Richard Bach

I felt like a moth in a chandelier — all at once there were lots of pretty choices, but I wasn't quite sure where to fly.

— Richard Bach

No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are.

— Richard Bach

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

— Richard Bach

That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

— Richard Bach

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

— Richard Bach

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

— Richard Bach

The music broke from the piano like clear cold water from a prophet-touched rock, pouring and splashing around us while her fingers leaped and spread, curled and stiffened and melted and flickered in magic pass and streaked lightning above the keyboard. Never before had she played for me... because we were lovers now, was she free to play...?

— Richard Bach

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.

— Richard Bach

What I have just heard is pure . . . listen! . . . radiance, that you took from cloud-linings and sunrises and distilled into light that I can hear! Do you know how good, how lovely that is, what you can make the piano do?

— Richard Bach

He wanted so much to ask, and he dared so little to know.

— Richard Bach

As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time, we're all one.

— Richard Bach

The things we own, the places we live, the events of our lives: empty settings. How easy to chase after settings, and forget diamonds! The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?

— Richard Bach

The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy.

— Richard Bach

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

— Richard Bach

We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!

— Richard Bach

Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to Love.

— Richard Bach

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?

— Richard Bach

You teach best what you most need to learn.

— Richard Bach

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

— Richard Bach

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

— Richard Bach

One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves.

— Richard Bach

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers change.

— Richard Bach

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

— Richard Bach

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

— Richard Bach

A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.

— Richard Bach

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.

— Richard Bach

Learning is finding out what you already know.

— Richard Bach

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

— Richard Bach

Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours.

— Richard Bach

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.

— Richard Bach