Detachment Quotes - Page 8

• I'm not prescribing non-doing as a universal response to our problems. Sometimes, something obviously needs to be done. And we retreat into a spiritual or meditative state that we fancy up by calling it mindfulness, but really it's an unhealthy detachment and a shrinking back from life. But culturally, it's much more common to be trapped in habits of reaction, whether on a systemic level or on a personal level. That's where the non-doing comes in, which is something that we don't really have room for. I think that it's something we need to embrace as part of the creative process.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Spiritual, Thinking, Creative

  Source: www.mindfulnessbell.org

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• When you are born without the ordinary feelings and emotions shared by most other human beings, life looks different to you. It seems at times like a movie you’re walking through, more a spectator than a participant. There is above all a lack of empathy with most of mankind, a sense of detachment. But with detachment comes perspective. The less you care, the more you know, and the more you know the less you care.

  Boyd Rice

  Perspective, Empathy, Feelings

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• Detachment is a flaw, not a virtue-don’t you realize that?

  Steven Erikson

  Realizing, Flaws, Virtue

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• No one, it has been said, will ever look at the Moon in the same way again. More significantly can one say that no one will ever look at the earth in the same way. Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both its diminutive place in a solar system and its inestimable value as a life -fostering planet. As earthmen, we may have taken another step into adulthood. We can see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Taken, Moon, Men

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• Woman's soul is present and lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body has more pronoucedly the character of an instrument which serves them in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment.

  Edith Stein

  Character, Men, Soul

  Edith Stein (2012). “Edith Stein Essays on Woman”, p.63, ICS Publications

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• However, the serious seeker of detachment will have to embrace the Holy Trinity of Ss - Solitude, Stillness and Silence - and reject the new religion of Commotionism, which believes that the meaning of life is constant company, movement and noise.

  Michael Foley

  Believe, Silence, Solitude

  Michael Foley (2010). “The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

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• Those who conquer their minds are beings of renunciation and detachment. They are beings of renunciation and detachment they are lovingly focused on the True One, they realize and understand themselves.

  Guru Nanak

  Mind, Realizing, Conquer

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• Detachment is the ultimate pleasure.

  Saraha

  Pleasure, Ultimate

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• By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Essence, Names, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.192, Penguin

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• Is not virtue a negation of becoming?

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Attachment, Becoming, Virtue

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• The perfection of yoga is to become detached. And the perfection of detachment is to become completely attached, attached to God.

  Radhanath Swami

  Yoga, Perfection, Detached

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• The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. If you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it — you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.

  Lorrie Moore

  Art, Who I Am, Loving You

  "Lorrie Moore" by Louisa Kamps, www.elle.com. September 16, 2009.

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• So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once.

  Tony Hoagland

  Beautiful, Running, Hurt

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• I believe that you've created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Jobs, Believe, Reality

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.185, Penguin

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• When in still air and still in summertime
  A leaf has had enough of this, it seems
  To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage
  Its drifting in detachment down the road.

  Howard Nemerov

  Summer, Air, August

  Howard Nemerov (1981). “The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov”, p.440, University of Chicago Press

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• Transcendence or detachment, leaving the body, pure love, lack of jealousy-that's the vision we are given in our culture, generally, when we think of the highest thing. . . . Another way to look at it is that the aim of the person is not to be detached, but to be more attached-to be attached to working; to be attached to making chairs or something that helps everyone; to be attached to beauty; to be attached to music.

  Robert Bly

  Commitment, Thinking, Leaving

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• What we call a financial crisis is really at its core a crisis of management, and not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of management culture. ...In other words, what you had is a detachment of people who know the business from people who are running the business.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Running, People, Democracy

  "MBA: Mostly bloody awful". "Background Briefing" with Stephen Crittenden, www.abc.net.au. March 29, 2009.

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• Sentimental assertions are always a form of detachment; they confront the acute, terrible awareness of individual pain, the sharp particularity of loss or the fierce individuality of passion with the dulling universal certainty of platitude.

  Mark Doty

  Inspirational, Pain, Passion

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• Not everybody, however, has a genuine sense of humor. That calls for an altruistic detachment from oneself and a mysterious sympathy with others which is felt even before they open their mouths. Only the person who has also a gift for affection can have a true sense of humor. A good laugh is a sign of love; it may be said to give us a glimpse of, or a first lesson in, the love that God bears for every one of us.

  Karl Rahner

  Giving, Laughing, Glimpse

  Karl Rahner (1973). “Belief today: three theological meditations”, Sheed & Ward Ltd

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• All the same, my depression and self-hatred, my desire to mutilate myself with broken bottles, my numbness and crying fits, my inability to get out of bed for days and days, the feeling of the world moving in to crush me, went on and on. But I knew I wouldn't go mad, even if that release, that letting-go, was a freedom I desired. I was waiting for myself to heal.

  Hanif Kureishi

  Depression, Crush, Letting Go

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• Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: symptoms of the foul decay within.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Fall, Eye

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.155, Anchor

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• I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. [...] There's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy.

  Jeremy Irons

  Live Life, Healthy, Feelings

  "King of all his castles" by Elaine Lipworth, www.nzherald.co.nz. May 14, 2005.

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• I am overcome by a feeling of complete detachment. I am a mere object to these people. I am barely human any more.

  Tabitha Suzuma

  People, Feelings, Overcoming

  Tabitha Suzuma (2012). “Forbidden”, p.417, Simon and Schuster

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• Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light!

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Light, Land, Essence

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• Says Bargh: "We all hold dear idea that we´re the captain of our own sould, and we´re in charge, and it´s a very scary feeling when we are not. In fact, that´s what psychosis is - the feeling of detachment from reality and that you are not in control, and that´s a very frightening feeling for anyone."

  Leonard Mlodinow

  Reality, Psychosis, Ideas

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