The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly.
Richard BachRead
Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother_x000D_ _x000D_ to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this_x000D_ _x000D_ gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else,_x000D_ _x000D_ Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of passion and pursuing one's true interests over mundane necessities.
In this quote from 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' by Richard Bach, we learn about a seagull who transcends the ordinary expectations of his species by valuing the experience of flight over the basic instinct to eat. This distinction highlights the essence of following one's passion and the significance of seeking joy in pursuits that bring true fulfillment, rather than simply conforming to societal norms or survival instincts.
Themes
PassionFlightPursuitFreedomBeyond
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a motivational speech about pursuing one's dreams.
More from Richard Bach
All quotes →True love stories never have endings.
Richard BachRead
We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks.
Richard BachRead
From time to time it's fun to close our eyes, and in that dark say to ourselves, 'I am the sorcerer, and when I open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created, and for which I and only I am completely responsible.' Slowly then, eyelids open like curtains lifting stage-center. And sure enough, there's our world, just the way we've built it.
Richard BachRead
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 BachRead
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 BachRead
Similar quotes
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
EpictetusRead
A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.
George Bernard ShawRead
If people don't love what you're doing, that doesn't mean you're wrong.
Albert BrooksRead
When a person does not think, "Where shall I put it?" the mind will extend throughout the entire body and move to any place at all. . . . The effort not to stop the mind in just one place - this is discipline. Not stopping the mind is object and essence. Put it nowhere and it will be everywhere. Even in moving the mind outside the body, if it is sent in one direction, it will be lacking in nine others. If the mind is not restricted to just one direction, it will be in all ten.
Takuan SohoRead
Shortly after I met my mentor he asked me, ‘Mr. Rohn, how much money have you saved and invested over the last six years?’ And I said, ‘None.’ He then asked, ‘Who sold you on that plan?’
Jim RohnRead
The mind usually says, “I know, I know, I know.” But the “don’t-know mind” is where wisdom lives.
Byron KatieRead