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Aspirations Quotes

Browse 173 quotes about Aspirations.

Aspirations Quotes

“Finally, I must acknowledge, before anybody beats me to it, that I am not particularly good at doing most of the things that I recommend in this book. I am often outraged, I rarely resist flattery, I frequently argue in ways that are unnecessarily critical and hurtful, and I have a genuinely difficult time displaying charity or kindness. The figure I refer to as 'me' in these pages in an aspirational me and not the real thing, and anything I have learned, I have learned by doing things badly. As Robert Browning's Andrea del Sarto mused, 'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?”

“Selfish Dreamscapes If you have a dream, as you should, relish in being selfish about building every passionate aspect of it. The crowd of spectators and consumers will still be exactly where you left them... gossiping about everybody else's dream but their own.”

“It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet--that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us. The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces.”

“Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.”

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

“was driving up S 25th St., this afternoon, and saw this saying on a sign: "Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror." Well, I pondered on that a bit. I sense a bit of danger with the idea of not checking out the rear view mirror on occasion. Like driving, it is important we know what has been and what could be coming from behind. Some old cliches are around because they are true..."If you forget the past, you're bound to repeat it."...."Be prepared"... "Keep your eye on the prize." Reflections ... Presence ... Aspirations ...”

“You were born with your head in the clouds, your future wide open, feeling almost weightless. Almost. Kudoclasm. You had dreams even before you had memories: a cloud of fantasies and ambitions of secret plans and hidden potential, visions of who you are, and what your life will be. They keep your spirits high, floating somewhere above your life, where the world looks faintly hypothetical, almost translucent. But every time you reach for the sky and come away with nothing, you start to wonder what’s holding them up. “Surely it would have happened by now?!” You feel time starting to slip, pulling you back down to earth. even as you tell yourself, don’t look down. You don’t have the luxury of floating through life, because you may not have the time. The future is already rushing toward you, and it’s not as far away as you think. It feels like your life is flashing before your eyes, but it’s actually just the opposite: you’re thinking forward, to everything you still haven’t done, the places you had intended to visit, the life goals you’d eventually get around to, some day in the future. You start dropping your delusions one by one, like tossing ballast overboard. And soon the fog lifts, and everything becomes clear— right until the moment your feet touch the ground. And there it is, “the real world.” As if you’ve finally grown up, steeped in reality, your eyes adjusting to the darkness, seeing the world for what it is. But in truth, you don’t belong there. We dream to survive— no more optional than breathing. Maybe “the real world” is just another fantasy, something heavy to push back against, and launch ourselves still higher. We’re all afraid to let go, of falling into a bottomless future. But maybe we belong in the air, tumbling in the wind. Maybe it’s only when you dive in that you pick up enough speed to shape the flow of reality, and choose your own course, flying not too high, and not too low, but gliding from one to the other in long playful loops. To dream big, and bounce ideas against the world and rise again. Moving so fast, you can’t tell where the dream ends and where the world begins.”

“They reached the entrance to Oweynagat. “When is Samhain?” Chad asked, whispering in a timid voice. “Tomorrow,” Caplait answered. “Tomorrow?” Chad’s voice wobbled. “But the stories that Banban told us, of ghosts and two-headed monsters and the Morrigan—shouldn’t we wait until after Samhain?” “A week? But tomorrow is Samhain; you all heard what Banban told us! About the graves opening, and the spirits in this cave; the emerging of creatures from Oweynagat; the Morrigan on a chariot pulled by a onelegged chestnut horse; and the Ellen Trechen, the tripleheaded monster!”

“If you hold a candle close to you, its flame rises. And if you hold it away from you, its flame shrinks. The same way you hold a candle close to you, keep all your plans, aspirations, projects, and dreams close to you too. Do not share your plans or goals until you complete them, because as you hold your candle away from you — envy, jealousy, and resentment may put out your flame before it grows.”