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
When we come to the last moment of this lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is 'What is the quality of our love?'
Interpretation
What this quote means
The significance of our lives will be measured by the love we shared with others.
This quote emphasizes that at the end of our lives, the most important aspect we will reflect on is the quality of love we've given and received. It suggests that material achievements and successes will pale in comparison to the relationships and deep connections formed through love.
Themes
LoveLifeReflectionRelationshipsQuality
In practice
Example use cases
In a eulogy, one could highlight the importance of love in the deceased's life by referencing this quote.
More from Richard Bach
All quotes →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.
Richard BachRead
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
Similar quotes
But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
The ecstatic insanity of romantic pursuit can be so enhanced by music that entire romantic conquests, victories and ruinous, crushing defeats can be tied to songs to such a degree that it's almost unbearable to listen to them again, as they bring back the memories so vividly.
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Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.
VoltaireRead
There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
If one less kid can grow up without hiding who they are along the way or having to believe that who they love is something that will make them lonely, then everything I went through will be worth it.
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I don't need the stars in the night I found my treasure All I need is you by my side so shine forever
John KeatsRead