Quotes that changed you?

[randomdude]

Once before i talked to my therapist and despite of her attempt to help me i always ended up telling her that i am crazy and messed up and that there is no hope for me and life for people like me is pointless, her answer was " As long as a person is able to love and work he cannot be crazy". Those words were so powerful i never really thought i was crazy after that and 2 years have passed since she told me that and we never talked about that again. Maybe this quote sounds ****** to some of you but this really effected me and my way of thinking .

 

[Naleena]

I think that's an awesome quote and, yes, I have many quotes that help me in my life. My facebook page is full of them.

 

[PrinceOfPeace]

Last year a friend frm my church who I hadnt known long called & invited me to speak at a youth programme that she runs & to share some hardships I had overcome & of how God became a big part of my life, also to give a demo on electric guitar for the kids, I agreed quickly & joked with her but when the call ended the full weight of what I had just agreed to began to sink in, 1.I was afraid to speak in front of an audience 2.I ddnt even know how many I'd be speaking too 3.What was I gonna say? 4.what song would I play? 5. Im partialy blind so I wldnt even be able to see these peoples faces, I started to have a panic attack I tryed to get a friend of mine to stand in for me but he declined, the nxt day there was a mix up in txt messages so I thought everything had been cancelled but 20mins before I was supposed to speak I got a call from my friend asking where I was, I said isnt everythng cancelled? she said no get ur butt here with a harsh attitude cos she knew I had been trying to get out of it, I went a nervous wreck & upset that she pushed me so harshly, I spoke & delivered my story shakey but well the hall was full of people loads of youth ranging from 12-20 also a number of adults & sum I knew from church, The hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, as I spoke of my deteriating eyesight, partial blindness & issues that came with feeling like no one understood what I was going thru, how I hid it working many jobs, becoming anti social, how Id turned to drugs & booze ,how I took up martial arts fighting in bouts to release my anger & frustration instead of fighting in the streets, with only my closest family knowing I was partialy blind, near death exp's & how God protected me thru it all & how returning home & going back to church helped me so much, after I spoke my friend took the microphone from my trembling hands and said just how proud she was to know me for what kind of person I am despite all i'd been thru, how I was the most amazing guitarist she'd ever come across & how honoured she felt to play music with me at church everyweek, I then was motioned over to my Guitar and amp & I spoke about a small melodic segment of music from the ending of a Pantera song I loved to play Floods, at this point still no sound not a whisper or a single movement of anykind in the room, I played the piece and delivered it with all my heart repeating it several times cos its quite short all the while making it my own, then to end it I hit a MEGA solo ripping it to pieces so to speak, then ending on a power chord in a powerstance, to the jumping and deafning applauds from the whole hall not a single person was left sitting in their seats, people wanted to talk with me I got photo's & asked for my facebook & a photographer took a photo for the youth magazine, at the end of the night my friend thanked me & said my kids hung on your every word they have never been that receptive that was amazing, I ddnt say much, nxt day she called & spoke about the great number of hits and comments that flooded the youth site how inspired the kids were & asking for my FB, she aske how I felt about it all, I was in shock & all I could say was why did you push me, she said ''God never gave you a spirit of fear'', ''you are stronger than you think'', ''and I dont care about your past I care about your future'', those words stuck with me from then to now I changed my whole attitude, when I feel doubt I assure my self when I feel fear I step up & challenge myself & Ive accomplished so much, she changed my life with a few simple words

 

[EveWasFramed]

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

-George Bernard Shaw

 

[Broken_Doll]

“You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female.”
— Erin McKean of Dress A Day

 

[jayme89]

There are two I can think of. The first pertains to when I was in middle school. I was being bullied and tormented by my peers. I came home crying a lot and was near suicidal. My mom one day told me "When you leave here you will never see these people again" , "all you need to do is graduate and you will never see these people again." And I literally kept that in my head everyday going to and from school, and guess what? I left school and haven't seen those people again It just makes me smile and think about how our tough times DO ultimately end, and looking back it makes me feel really silly for allowing those people to get to me so badly. Those people who hurt us (in most cases) WILL be gone one day.

The second was when my mother was moving me into my first college dorm and she said something really quick and simple but it changed my mentality. She said "Never hang around people who make you feel bad about yourself, you have nothing to prove to them." It was so simple but I use it for every relationship I have. There were so many times before that where I would put myself around people who I knew didn't like me but I wanted to be accepted. Those words really freed me and gave me permission to say "No, I will not be around people who treat me badly or make me feel bad about myself." It's amazing how some quotes can truly free you.

 

[Dissident]

"There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point."
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

 

[Limlim]

The dad from that 70s show:

Come upstairs to your stupid birthday party. You're an adult now and being adult means having to put up with crap you don't like.

 

[Lady X]

Psalm 139

1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

This Psalm is of real importance to me, especially in the past in times of doubt about life and myself.

This is a quote to me that signifies the light in life, the purpose and soul.

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our rightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu

Lovecraft's insight into the inner darkness did change me somewhat. It enlightened me to the fact that it isn't "just me" or somehow morbid to appreciate the dark, the weird, the mysterious. This is a quote that for me was important from a darker perspective.

 

[WildernessWildChild]

 

[Bones]

Cybill Shepherd - March 22, 2007

... It wasn't until I began exploring God as a woman or Goddess that I began to really come into my own fullness as a human being. The empowerment that comes from believing that God can be a woman just changes your attitude so much. You have to take the next step that's logical ...

 

[Naleena]

 

[EveWasFramed]

That's awesome, Nal.

 

[rayeo]

"Things will happen in your life that you can't stop, but that's no reason to shut out the world. There's a purpose for the good and for the bad."
- Crazy Pete, Now and Then

"Close your eyes and pretend it's all a bad dream. That's how I get by."
- Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Carribean: To World's End

 

[Lone Apothecary]

Some of the quotes that changed me the most came from Bertrand Russell.

“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.”

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."


And, of course, I can't resist tossing in one from Richard Dawkins, since I saw a quote of his earlier in this thread.

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."