Detachment Quotes - Page 4

• Wisdom means that it gives you detachment, detachment from all that is selfishness, self-centredness, self-obsession, ego - all connected with self.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

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• Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Effort, Comfort, Selfless

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• How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Nice, Numbness

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.140, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.

  Haruki Murakami

  Ocean, Night, Numbness

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 09, 2013

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• Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

  Eckhart Tolle

  People, Mind, Needs

  "Where Are You Now? An Interview with Eckhart Tolle". Interview with Stephen Gawtry, www.watkinsmagazine.com. November 4, 2014.

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• Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night.

  John Burroughs

  Heart, Night, Self

  John Burroughs, Charlotte Zoë Walker (2001). “The Art of Seeing Things: Essays”, p.222, Syracuse University Press

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• Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.

  William Osler

  Art, Humility, Grace

  Sir William Osler, Classics of Medicine Library (1985). “The philosophical essays”

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• ...a very terrifying aspect of our society, and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe [war and human suffering]. I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler ...or other that crop up - these people would not able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity - and therefore I think that it is in some sense the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who should share a very serious burden of guilt, that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and more violent.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, People

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• Today I detach from other people's dramas. I love them and pray for them. I am a role model of peace for them. But I no longer rescue them, or put my own needs last. It is my right to be happy and to help others as I feel lovingly guided instead from guilt or obligation. I respect my feelings and expect others to do so too. And so it is!

  Doreen Virtue

  Drama, Helping Others, Role Models

  FaceBook post by Doreen Virtue from Aug 15, 2012

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• The 'I' casts off the illusion of the 'I' and yet remains 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The Realized do not see any paradox in it. Consider the case of the worshipper. He approaches God and prays to be absorbed in Him. He then surrenders himself in faith and by concentration. And what remains afterwards? In the place of the original 'I', self-surrender leaves a residuum of God in which the 'I' is lost. That is the highest form of devotion or surrender and the peak of detachment.

  Ramana Maharshi

  Self, Realization, Quiet

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• I don't really identify with America, I don't really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don't really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don't. All the definitions are there, but I don't really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture and the human experience and culture and human choices.

  George Carlin

  Emotional, Thinking, America

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved.

  Thomas Merton

  Truth, Intuition, Sake

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.49, Sounds True

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• Let us realize that engagement and detachment aren't opposite-the more engaged we become, the more detached we will have to be.

  Deepak Chopra

  Inspiring, Opposites, Empowering

  "Where Is Peace In a Time of War?" by Deepak Chopra, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 31, 2006.

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• The list of qualities (an investor should have) include patience, self-reliance, common sense, a tolerance for pain, open-mindedness, detachment, persistence, humility, flexibility, a willingness to do independent research, an equal willingness to admit mistakes, and the ability to ignore general panic.

  Peter Lynch

  Pain, Mistake, Humility

  Peter Lynch (2012). “One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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• The yoga of selfless giving is easy for anyone to practice. The key is detachment. The spirit is unattachment to results.

  Frederick Lenz

  Karma, Yoga, Selfless Giving

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• Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

  Edward St Aubyn

  People, Way, Force

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• All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.

  Adam Gopnik

  Secret, Quality, Littles

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• The warrior knows that he is free to choose his desires, and he makes these decisions with courage, detachment, and - sometimes - with just a touch of madness.

  Paulo Coelho

  Warrior, Decision, Desire

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• Wandering, (is) considered as a state of detachment form every given point in space.

  Georg Simmel

  Space, States, Form

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• In order to be effective you need not only virtue but also mental strength.

  Aristotle

  Attachment, Order, Needs

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• And so I am feeling numb. It's a curious feeling, and I get it all the time. My attention to the world around me disappears, and something starts to hum inside my head. Far off, voices try to bump up against me, but I repel them. My ears fill up with water and I focus on the humming in my head.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Numbness, Voice, Water

  Marya Hornbacher (2009). “Madness: A Bipolar Life”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The essence of the Way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.

  Bodhidharma

  Attachment, Essence, Practice

  Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.47, Macmillan

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• Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment.

  Isabel Allende

  Fear, Reality, Practice

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• If you try too much to change the outside, that shows that you are still attached. If a man tries to be detached, it shows attachment. Why bother about detachment if you are not attached? If a man escapes from women, it shows that sex is still the obsession. Otherwise, why escape from women if you are not obsessed?

  Rajneesh

  Sex, Men, Trying

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• Virtue is the panacea for both body and mind. The virtuous person can be both healthy and happy. How is virtue to be cultivated? How can it express itself in daily practice? Through service to living beings, through seva. Virtue must flow through the triple channel of love, mercy and detachment, in order to feed the roots of seva.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Order, Practice, Roots

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