Richard David Bach is an American writer widely known as the author of some of the 1970s’ biggest sellers, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. Profoundly inspirational Richard Bach quotes will get you through anything when the going gets tough and help you succeed in every aspect of life.
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Famous Richard Bach Quotes
A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. — 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 reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. — 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
To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived. — Richard Bach
You don’t love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That’s what I mean by love. — 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
You wait a lifetime to meet someone who understands you, accepts you as you are. At the end, you find that someone, all along, has been you. — Richard Bach
The man who flies an airplane … must believe in the unseen. — Richard Bach
Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don’t. — Richard Bach
We think, sometimes, there’s not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests… What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure… not only are they here-and-now, they’re all that ever lived on earth! — Richard Bach
Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t. — Richard Bach
Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof. — Richard Bach
You don’t want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. — Richard Bach
Listen to what you know instead of what you fear. — Richard Bach
The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise. — Richard Bach
What would our lives be like without tests, odds against us, adventure, risk? — Richard Bach
There are grand rewards for those who pick the high hard roads, but those rewards are hidden by years. — Richard Bach
It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned – when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse. — Richard Bach
Mistakes – call them unexpected learning experiences. — 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
You’ve given up your whole life to be the person you are now. Is it worth it? — Richard Bach
The ideas behind the words are simple ones that work in everyday life; find what we most want to do; do it, no matter what; and in the doing be guaranteed a very difficult and a very happy lifetime. — Richard Bach
Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose. — Richard Bach
Whatever happens on the surface, it’s leading us in a direction. That beautiful core within us that is our character will make choices that will inevitably leads us to a higher understanding of who we are and why we’re here. And it’s best to be aware of that while it’s happening. — Richard Bach
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. — Richard Bach
An easy life doesn’t teach us anything. In the end it’s the learning that matters: what we’ve learned and how we’ve grown — Richard Bach
I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy. — Richard Bach
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god. — 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
Nobody comes to Earth to dodge problems. We come here to take ’em on. — Richard Bach
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however. — Richard Bach
Nothing good is a miracle, nothing lovely is a dream. — Richard Bach
Pain and adversity are powerful vehicles to promote personal growth. Nothing helps you learn, grow, and evolve more quickly. Nothing offers you as big an opportunity to reclaim more of your authentic power as a person. — Richard Bach
Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning’s cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions. — Richard Bach
It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost. — Richard Bach
Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices. — Richard Bach
One of the delights of the new age is that it’s a turning of consciousness to give us permission to look beyond appearances. But there are traps that come with it. It’s brave to throw off the old altars and churches and ceremonies that kept us from discovery, it’s not so brave to replace them with chants and rituals and new priests who are retreads of the old. — Richard Bach
You’re never given a dream without the power to make it true. — 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
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
To bring anything into your life, imagine that it’s already there. — Richard Bach
Sometimes when you say goodbye, that’s the right thing to do in a relationship. — Richard Bach
Numbers are limits, and perfection doesn’t have limits. — Richard Bach
Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it. — Richard Bach
Flyers have a sense of adventures yet to come, instead of dimly recalling adventures of long ago as the only moments in which they truly lived. — Richard Bach
We magnetize into our lives whatever we hold in our thought. — Richard Bach
I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it? — Richard Bach
Life tells you nothing, it shows you everything. — Richard Bach
You’re master of what you’ve lived, artisan at what you’re living, amateur at what’s next to live. — Richard Bach
Don’t fear change. It’s always for the best. — Richard Bach
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness. — Richard Bach
For a moment, off balance, was I annoyed? Anger is always fear, I thought, and fear is always fear of loss. Would I lose myself if he made those choices? It took a second to settle down: I’d lose nothing. They’d be his wishes, not mine, and he’s free to live as he wants. The loss would come if I dared force him, tried to live for him and me as well. There’d be disaster worse than life on a bar stool. — Richard Bach
Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger. — Richard Bach
Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life. — Richard Bach
If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem. — Richard Bach
Judge not by the form of the messenger, but the form of the message. — Richard Bach
The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky. No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference? — Richard Bach
If our body is a perfect expression of our thought about body, and if our thought about body is that it’s condition has everything to do with inner image and nothing to do with time, then we don’t have to be impatient for being too young or frightened of being too old. — Richard Bach
A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow. — Richard Bach
Two words: Love leads. Listen to that ring of love within. If we follow that leading of love we’ll be guaranteed an adventurous, positive, joyful life. — Richard Bach
The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder. — Richard Bach
I think our learning lies along the path of whatever it is we love. — Richard Bach
In spite of my study, I have learned. Every grand religion begins in light. Yet only hearts hold light. Pages cannot. I have paper in my hands. Give these words to the world and they will be loved and understood by those who already know their truth. The truth doesn’t burn. The truth waits for anyone who wishes to find it… only these pages will burn. At one with the stars… with the pages and their love… one with everything that is, that ever was or will be. One. — Richard Bach
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly. — Richard Bach
The gull sees farthest who flies highest — Richard Bach
We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture… We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it into gravel, we can shape it into glory. — 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, teachers. — Richard Bach
Part One: I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy. Part Two: Everybody else is free to do whatever they feel like doing, for a living. Part Three: Responsible is Able to Respond, able to answer for the way we choose to live. There’s only one person we have to answer to, of course, and that is ourselves. — Richard Bach
Life does not listen to your logic; it goes on its own way, undisturbed. You have to listen to life. — Richard Bach
That which most concerns and worries you – your survival – is the only certainty you have. — Richard Bach
If we want to end this lifetime higher than we began, we can expect an uphill road. — 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
We can start working with time if you wish, Chiang said, till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love. — 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
The creative, loving-something life is also the healthy one. There is healing and protection in doing what makes you happy. — 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
Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it. — Richard Bach
Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know. — Richard Bach
The great thing about writing is, if you don’t like the world, we’ll create a different one. — Richard Bach
Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned. — Richard Bach
Why? What is so wonderful about mass murder that nobody in the history of the world has ever fond any smarter solution to problems than killing everybody who doesn’t agree? Is that the limit of human intelligence? — Richard Bach
I have a way of finding what is true for me, and it’s not finished yet. — Richard Bach
Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives. — Richard Bach
Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! — Richard Bach
Were we, also, hiking along some cosmic journal page? Were the events about us all part of a message we could understand, if only we found the right perspective from which to read them? Somehow, with our long series of miracles, I thought so. — Richard Bach
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. — Richard Bach
Your life is a treasure and you are so much more than you know. — Richard Bach
The big thing about writing is three commands: Have fun. Don’t think. Don’t care. — Richard Bach
Only a few people are interested in what you have to say, but that is all right. You don’t have to tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds. — Richard Bach
If you’re always looking at someone else, trying to imitate them, how can your natural gifts ever emerge? — Richard Bach
In order to win, you must expect to win. — Richard Bach
I’m here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else in the world. — Richard Bach
Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. — Richard Bach
There is something that is transcendental about when we are immersed in that which we most love. — Richard Bach
So this world, I think, and an indefinite number of other worlds of our creation, are also – we’re here for fun; we’re here for learning; we’re here for remembering who we are, and who we are, are expressions of life so absolutely linked with the life that is, always was, always will be. — Richard Bach
My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home. — Richard Bach
The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It’s Intimacy. — Richard Bach
If you want to meet someone who can fix any situation you don’t like, who can bring you happiness in spite of what other people say or believe, look in a mirror, then say this magic word: ‘Hello.’ — Richard Bach
Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you’re a master, and you are. — Richard Bach
We look at some people as if they were special, gifted, divine. Nobody is special and gifted and divine. No more than you are, no more than I am. The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practice it. — Richard Bach
The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it. — Richard Bach
Isn’t it strange how much we know if only we ask ourselves instead of somebody else. — Richard Bach
As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming instead of being. Beyond time, we are all one. — Richard Bach
One must first learn to fall if one would fly. — Richard Bach
Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well. — Richard Bach
Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life. — Richard Bach
Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow, something will happen, something you couldn’t plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your next brick wall. — Richard Bach
I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me. — Richard Bach
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours. Do you think, if you say the word impossible enough times, that difficult things will suddenly become easier for you? — Richard Bach
Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not. Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can. — Richard Bach
Anyone desperate enough for suicide… should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try. — Richard Bach
I was a microscopic life-form, infinitely large, stumbled backstage of its playhouse, caught a nanosecond glance of its own reality and nearly vaporized in shock. — Richard Bach
When you dream, all the scenery, characters, events, perils, and outcomes are built from your own consciousness, the darks and oppressions as well as the delights. Same with the world awake, though it takes you longer to build it. — Richard Bach
Sense of family is enormously important to me. In the larger sense, we’re all of us family; we’re all of us soulmates. — Richard Bach
Does anybody learn writing, or do they just touch someone who lets them see the power of the deleted word? — Richard Bach
You teach best what you most need to learn. — Richard Bach
No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it. — Richard Bach
Each of us is free to move our consciousness through that infinite pattern of possibilities as we please. If we’re filled with fears, or if we trust the fears of others, we’ll choose a path in which our city falls into the sea, or a path in which a third world war vaporizes us, or whatever other disaster is most thrilling or horrifying or fascinating for us. — Richard Bach
Whatever it is that calls us, that’s our path. And as we walk that path, we have a chance to shine forth who we are. It affects other people around us. — Richard Bach
Anybody who’s ever mattered, anybody who’s ever been happy, anybody who’s ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions. — Richard Bach
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed. — Richard Bach
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift. — Richard Bach
All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or despair. Snapshots don’t show the million decisions that led to that moment. — Richard Bach
Don’t be dismayed by good-byes. 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
Cherish yesterday, Dream tomorrow, Live today. — Richard Bach
