A Quote by Paula Gunn Allen

Healing the self means committing ourselves to a wholehearted willingness to be what and how we are-beings frail and fragile, strong and passionate, neurotic and balanced, diseased and whole, partial and complete, stingy and generous, twisted and straight, storm-tossed and quiescent, bound and free.

Paula Gunn Allen

Quote Topics

Balanced Beings Bound Committing Complete Diseased Fragile Frail Free Generous Healing How Means Neurotic Ourselves Partial Passionate Self Stingy Storm Straight Strong Tossed Twisted Whole Willingness

Quote Author

Paula Gunn Allen
American - Novelist
October 24, 1939 - May 29, 2008

I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others.

Saul Bellow

The process of self-healing is the privilege of every being. Self-healing is not a miracle, nor is self-healing a dramatization of the personality as though you could do something superior. Self-healing is a genuine process of the relationship between the physical and the infinite power of the soul.

Harbhajan Singh Yogi

There are days that I get neurotic with the instrument [violin]. Every little adjustment will change the balance for good or for bad. It's kind of a miracle, the way the whole thing works as an acoustical whole, so perfectly balanced that any little thing will - which also means the weather, the humidity.

Joshua Bell

Free passion is radiation without a radiator, a fluid, pervasive warmth that flows effortlessly. It is not destructive because it is a balanced state of being and highly intelligent. Self-consciousness inhibits this intelligent, balanced state of being. By opening, by dropping our self-conscious grasping, we see not only the surface of an object, but we see the whole way through.

Chogyam Trungpa

Enlightenment means that you're never the same. You move and shift as the quiescent state, in a body or out of it. And since the quiescent state is perpetual and endless ecstasy, therefore you are endless.

Frederick Lenz

Human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase.

Salman Rushdie

We have to get to the Self beyond its physical and mental instrumentalities to realize we are not fragile mortal beings; there is an unbroken link between ourselves and the Beloved Mother of the Universe, the Divine Consciousness flowing through and permeating Infinity.

Daya Mata

I got hit in the face with a gun. I'm not very fragile at all. It makes me think maybe things would be easier if I were terribly frail and fragile somehow.

Patty Hearst

Be generous to the poor orphans and those in need. The man to whom our Lord has been liberal ought not to be stingy. We shall one day find in Heaven as much rest and joy as we ourselves have dispensed in this life.

Saint Ignatius

There is some pretty powerful self-interest in wanting a future that is not just running storm-to-storm. The argument that I make is not that we aren't competitive and selfish and greedy. We are. We're all of these things. We're complicated, competitive, greedy and nasty, and kind and generous and compassionate.

Naomi Klein

What, indeed, does not that word "cheerfulness" imply? It means a contented spirit, it means a pure heart, it means a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and charity; it means a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.

William Makepeace Thackeray

What twisted people we are. How simple we seem, or at least pretend to be in front of others, and how twisted we are deep down. How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others...And all for what? To hide what? To make people believe what?

Roberto Bolano

All minds are joined. Therefore, all healing is self-healing. Our inner peace will, of itself, pass to others once we accept it for ourselves.

Gerald Jampolsky

As Gandhi wisely points out, even as we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others. And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.

Wayne Muller

Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.