Jonathan Livingston Seagull Quotes

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.

You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way".

You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.

Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now.

Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip," Jonathan would say, other times, "is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.

He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect. -And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.

Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.

The gull sees farthest who flies highest.

He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form. "Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?" "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other.

To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the alhatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!" "I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.

Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!.

One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.

You don't love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by love.

Sully,for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, " and don't be foolish! What are we trying to practice everyday? If our friendship depends on things like space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?.

Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!.

For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice.

Don’t let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I’m a seagull. I like to fly, maybe….

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.

Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again.

that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he’d just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard?.

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.

The only law is one which leads to freedom.

His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see.

For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do...

To begin with, you've got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself.