c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this," and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened. There was no change coming, I thought here, only spring; I was wrong to be so frightened. The days would get warmer, and Uncle Julian would sit in the sun, and Constance would laugh when she worked in the garden, and it would always be the same. Jonas went on and on ("And then we sang! And then we sang!") and the leaves moved overhead and it would always be the same.
— Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Surely you're not saying that the life of a human and the life of an animal are of the same value?' he ven
— David Michie, The Dalai Lama's Cat
There's no thrilling anticipation of the day's first cup of coffee...nor the eye-closing delight of that first swallow of sauvignon blanc in the evening. We cats have no access to everyday mood-enhancing substances. Apart from humble catnip, there is no pharmaceutical refuge if we're suffering from boredom, depression, existential crisis, or even an everyday headache.
— David Michie, The Dalai Lama's Cat
Well. I am not afraid. But to protect you, Katerina, I will be discreet." Plain Kate considered a cat's idea of discretion, and was frightened.
— Erin Bow, Plain Kate
When the mouse laughs at the cat, there's a hole nearby.
— Nigerian Proverb
I take care of my flowers and my cats. And enjoy food. And that's living.
— Ursula Andress
I didn't know you had a cat!' she excl
— David Michie, The Dalai Lama's Cat
Mister didn't come with me on cases, being above such trivial matters, but he found me pleasant company when I was at home and not moving around too much, except when he didn't, in which case he went rambling
— Jim Butcher, Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files
Nothing snubs quite like a cat. What evolutionary purpose did it serve, this inherent disdain, this artful blanking?
— Will Wiles, Care of Wooden Floors
No one has ever been able to discover how they make this subtle sound, and what is more, no one ever will. It is a secret that has endured from the very beginning of the time of cats and will never be revealed.
— Paul Gallico
Cats are people, and the sooner the world accepts that fact, the better off the world will be.
— H. Allen Smith, Rhubarb
They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing—oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit.
— Janet Frame, Scented Gardens for the Blind
Annette sighs. Manfred's been upgrading this robot cat for years, and his ex-wife Pamela used to mess with its neural configuration, too: This is its third body, and it's getting more realistically uncooperative with every hardware upgrade. Sooner or later it's going to demand a litter tray and start throwing up on the carpet.
— Charles Stross, Accelerando
Let the cats rule the world
—  first thing they will do is to increase the number of mousetraps! Let the rats rule the world
Even cats have questions – like “Can’t you see my bowl is empty?” or “Why don’t you turn off the ***! rain now?” From their perspective we are gods!
— Jay Woodman
Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I prefer cats to people, for the most part. Most people aren't cute,& if they are cute they rapidly outgrow it
— William S. Burroughs
cats choose us
—  we don't own them
Bluestar's coming on patrol? Watch out for flying hedgehogs!
— -Erin Hunter Cloudpaw A Dangerous Path Warriors 5
On the edge of a laughing teacupDid Kubla Kat decreeThe the corn fritter festooned with medalsShall make the brownies freeAnd so the walls turned to waterTo let our sorrows drownAs the chairs burned themselves for warmthSo they need not face the clownThen the spoons burst into songAnd all the forks they understoodAs I stared at my talking clawsBecasue this catnip is just that good
— Francesco Marciuliano, I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats
A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.
— Mason Cooley
Then the cow asked:"What is a mirror?""It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy.
— Mark Twain, Short Stories
Alice: I didn't know that cheshire cats grinned. In fact, I didn't know that cats could grin.Duchess: They can, and most of 'em do.
— Rod Espinosa, Alice in Wonderland
It's 8a.m. and time to restIt's 10a.m. and time to relaxIt's noon and time for reposeIt's 3p.m. and time for shut-eyeIt's 6p.m. and time for siestaIt's 9p.m. and time to slumberIt's midnight and time to snoozeIt's 4a.m. and time to hang upside down from your bedroom ceiling, screaming.
— Francesco Marciuliano
If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.
— Chuck Jones
The cat arrived with a bottle of Scotch.
— Christopher S. Wren, The Cat Who Covered the World: The Adventures Of Henrietta And Her Foreign Correspondent
If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god. (Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might do if he was in a good mood.)
— Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
The human race can be roughly divided into two categories: ailurophiles and ailurophobes - cat lovers and the underprivileged.
— David Taylor, You and Your Cat
I Like this quote I dislike this quote“My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.
— Anthony Bourdain
My old black cat, he passed away this morning. He never knew what a heartache was. Woke up late and he danced till noon. If questioned why, answered just because. He never spoke much, preferring silence. Eight lost lives was all he had.
— Ian Anderson
Everything I tell her reminds her of some cute anecdote about one of her previous jobs, or previous boyfriends, or previous lives, or her cat, Sparkles, who is mitten-toed and sleeps on her head and can't be trusted on catnip.
— Kirt J. Boyd, The Last Stop
So Nikki came aboard as Jaqueline's spare cat, presumably in case our prime cat, Eliza, goes on vacation, takes industrial action, or requests a personal day.
— Christopher S. Wren, The Cat Who Covered the World: The Adventures Of Henrietta And Her Foreign Correspondent
When Johnny Depp saw it, he was so excited he fluffed up to twice his normal size.
— Diane Messidoro, How to Keep a Boy as a Pet
Got a bout of doubt? Breathe.
— Magdalena VandenBerg
All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...
— Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!
— T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;The name that no human research can discover--But the cat himself knows, and will never confess.When you notice a cat in profound meditation,The reason, I tell you, is always the same:His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.
— T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Are these black cats like the hare?""No. They're smaller; they only want me to play with them. Fly away with them to a place on the other side of the moon. There's a garden there, all silvery-gold, and the cats and hares dance and jump round and round. They can jump so much farther than they can on earth; it's like flying, and they love it so. Sometimes I've felt as if I'd like to dance and jump through the air too, they looked so happy, and I've thought maybe if I did I wouldn't be afraid any more, but when I look they're all dancing round a Figure that sits still in the middle of the garden. A big black Figure with a hood on. And It hasn't got any face. Its face is so awful that It keeps it covered. And then I get so terribly afraid. And everything stops.""And you see all that in the picture?""I don't know." She hesitated again. "I think it's partly dreams. After I've thought they were at the windows - the cats and the big hare. They sit there and watch, you see, after I've gone to sleep. But they don't come often. I don't usually know what's there."She came closer and whispered, her blue eyes earnest and weird, "I don't think it's an animal hare. I think it's Aunt Sarai's hare, that maybe it came from hell. It isn't swearing to say that word just as the name of a place, is it? That's why people used to be so scared of witches' black cats, isn't it, because they thought they weren't earth-cats, they were from the devil? Mother says there isn't any hell or any witches. But Aunt Sarai was a witch; that's why she can come back. I think they've all been witches here; the house is mad because mother wouldn't be; that's why it wants me now."Carew said, "It was all dreams, Betty. There is no hell. There is no garden on the other side of the moon. It's a dead world, full of volcanic craters, with no air for anything to grow in or breathe. A hare frightened you and, being nervous, you've had nightmares about it - pictures that fear paints on your mind just as an artist would on canvas, with paints and brushes."Every dream is now a movie we make for ourselves in our sleep...
— Evangeline Walton, Witch House
Even gods decay. Like, in 1890 somebody sold off thousands of mummified Ancient Egyptian sacred cats - _for fertilizer_. Get the point? Constancy isn't.
— Jonathan Gash, Jade Woman
Yet he could not enjoy the walk. In the morning especially a bougainvillaea looks handmade, lawns are always lawns, and it is true indeed that dogs smell fear. Cats don't say.
— Douglas Woolf, Wall to Wall
Where's Simon?" Clary interrupted.Isabelle wobbled. "He's a rat," she said darkly.Did he do something to you?" Alec was full of brotherly concern. "Did he touch you? If he tried anyt
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another. 
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
..[My friend Marco said]. essentially, humans are alive for the purpose of journey, a kind of three-act structure. They are born and spend several years discovering themselves and the world, then plod through a long middle in which they are compelled to search for a mate and reproduce and also create stability out of natural instability and then they find themselves at an ending tha seems to be designed for reflection. At the end, their bodies are slower, they are not as easily distracted, they do less work, and they think and feel about a life lived rather than look forward to a life getting started. He didn't know what the point of the journey was, but he did believe we were designed to search for and find something. And he wondered out loud if the point wasn't the search but the transformation the search creates. ...[I wondered] that we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us. The point of a story is the character arc, the change.
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Analysis does not transform consciousness.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
Yes, I am white now,' said Gandalf. 'Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.
— Angela Carter
The time is a critical one, for it marks the beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental transformation, not infrequently occurs.(on being 36 yrs old)
— C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation
Your body, which is bonding millions of molecules every second, depends on transformation. Breathing and digestion harness transformation. Food and air aren’t just shuffled about but, rather, undergo the exact chemical bonding needed to keep you alive. The sugar extracted from an orange travels to the brain and fuels a thought. The emergent property in this case is the newness of the thought; no molecules in the history of the universe ever combined to produce that exact thought.
— Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life
Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the ‘God is dead’ phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual) is never to be confused with its acquired purpose: ‘Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose.’	This is a liberating thought, which teaches us to never hold the history of something against its possible applications. Even if computers started out as calculators, that doesn’t prevent us from playing games on them. (47) (quoting Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals)
— Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
Might we begin then to transform our passing illuminations into abiding light?
— Huston Smith
And these thingsthat keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient,they look to us, the most transient,  to be their rescue.They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts,into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
Head held high and lips parted, she breathed in the music, sending it through her torso and arms and legs the way the Tai Chi teacher told us to breath the air, transforming it into energy, motion. Dancing is the body's song, and Bess sang.
— Lynne Sharon Schwartz
I had seen these transformations, people who had lost their will to live, coming back from their zombie states and radiating a new life force from their eyes.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
As we enter the path of transformation, the most valuable thing we have working in our favor is our yearning.
— Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind
He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
— C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his.
— Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You
The political writer, then is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.
— Cherríe L. Moraga
The day we mean what we say, even a “good morning” can be transformational!!!
— Harrish Sairaman
How does a hundred-and-eighty-pound man turn into a ninety-pound wolf? Where does the leftover ninety go? Does he park it in the umbrella stand overnight?
— Robin McKinley, Sunshine
Transformation literally means going beyond your form.
— Wayne Dyer
The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.
— Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium
He was attracted to this edge of unknowing, of hope and fear, he instinctively knew that surfing it was precondition for growth and transformation. And for feeling alive. Waking up and going out into the world not knowing what each day would hold, taking life as it comes, relinquishing any illusion of control. That's fresh, that's a good morning!
— Matt Padwick, Transpose - a self-styled revolution
The evil components of our shadow are the part of us that we deplore, the part of us that we prefer not to admit. One must set themselves free from all inhibitions in order to initiate close encounters with their innermost monster. By standing toe-to-toe with the part of ourselves that we most detest, a person is in a position to slay their fiendish sense of self and, by doing so, undergo a soulful transformation.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
...reflection can transform something familiar.
— Diane L. Dunton, Living, Learning, Healing: Inspirational Stories from the Heart
I believe those of us who have gone through serious hardships become, in some cosmic way, related. We form a tribe of battle veterans and fellow pilgrims suffused with knowledge none of us wanted. And although the admission to the club is unexpected and painful, the people you meet once you are there and the person you become will be with you forever
— Susan Mecca, The Gift of Crisis: Finding your best self in the worst of times
My sincere desire is to write in a style that is simple enough for a child to understand, yet powerful enough to change lives.
— Rev. Lorna Lorraine Wilson
Tragedy is like a strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.
— D H Lawwrence
How many nights must it takeone such as me to learnthat we aren’t, after all, madefrom that bird that flies out of its ashes,that for usas we go up in flames, our one workisto open ourselves, to bethe flames?
— Galway Kinnell
SpringThe season between winter and summer, comprising in the Northern Hemispherethe months March, April and May.The ability of something to return to its original shape when it is pressed down, stretched or twisted.
— Cecelia Ahern
SummerThe seasons between spring and autumn, comprising in the Northern Hemispherethe warmest months of the year: June, July and August. The period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline; the summer of life.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Year I Met You
SummerThe seasons between spring and autumn, comprising in the Northern Hemispherethe warmest months of the year: June, July and August. The period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline; the summer of life.― Cecilia Ahern
— Cecilia Ahern, The Year I met you
The transformation of a nation is impossible without God’s grace
— Sunday Adelaja
AutumnThe season between summer and winter, comprising in the Northern Hemisphereusually the months of September, October and November.A period of maturity.
— Cecelia Ahern
She had kept well behind the safety barrier her entire life, but now she was standing there at the edge of the precipice for the very first time, fumbling blindly with the realization that there were other ways to live, at how intense and rich life could be.
— Katarina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
WinterThe season between autumn and spring, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere the coldest months of the year: December, January and February.A period of inactivity or decay.
— Cecelia Ahern
The great sexual energy that one has on abstinence can be transformed into art, poetry, dance, and inventions.
— Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
There are women’s voices that sound like poetic, unearthly echoes. Then they change. The eyes change. I believe that all these legends about people changing into animals at night – like the stories of the werewolf, for instance – were invented by men who saw women transformed at night – from idealized, worshipful creatures into animals and thought that they were possessed.
— Anaïs Nin, Little Birds
Even if we change practices or behaviors, we are seeking transformed hearts. We must know in our bones God's heart for equality and wholeness in the Body of Christ then live our lives out of that truth, with invitation and joy, as living prophets of God's way of life.
— Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women
Successful people aren’t born that way. They usually work very hard, and that means constant effort – even if it’s not hard, it is steady. People born to wealth need to work to keep it. A radical shift means a thousand small changes, a few a day. Eventually you wake up……and you’re the person you wanted to be.
— Rohvannyn Shaw
Vehicles are one of the best modes of transportation. Relationships are one of the best vehicles of transformation.
— Kate McGahan
Cairo is in a state of becoming… We just don't know what it's becoming yet.
— Daniel Joseph Monti, Michael Ian Borer, Lyn C. Macgregor
Finding understanding of the human condition is what rehabilitates and transforms the human race
— Jeremy Griffith, Freedom: The End of the Human Condition
To transform yourself, you don't need to do big things. Just do small things in big way. Transformation will follow you!
— Rahul Sinha
…but death can’t be the final word, can it? I mean, look at this fire. The wood that we threw on it has been decimated, or so it seems, but in reality, the wood has been transformed into gasses and ashes. I think about that, you know, about how nothing is ever destroyed, but only changes form.
— Gudjon Bergmann, The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself
Sometimes, it becomes necessary for you to hit the bottom, and hit really hard that it awakens you.
— Frederick Espiritu, The Path to Awesomeness: Becoming Super, Being Human
You can inform the people you love of what you want for them but you cannot transform them into living it out.
— Dr. Ronn Elmore
And then he was gone. Leaving nothing but the swish of the front door, and a mountain of possibilities in his wake.
— Stacie Hammond, Ana J. Awakens
Finally, this book has the potential to radically alter your understanding of who you really are—your high calling as one of the “sons of God.
— David C. Alves, We're the sons of God. . .So What?: Believe God About Who You Really Are!
One day, you would see,You have dropped your attire,The dirt you are carrying on your shoulderAnd your entire self!
— Sayantan Sen, Oneness - A collection of poetry
You pass as a guy; I, as pregnant. Our waiter cheerfully tells us about his family, expresses delight in ours. On the surface, it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more “male,” mine, more and more “female.” But that’s not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging.
— Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
Whether your transformation happens through trauma, surprise, or intention, the process begins because of a growing need for change.
— Suzy Ross
Transform the Material.(Chuang Tzu)
— Sung Yee Poon, FREE EASY MIND in Conflicts. Stress.Loss
The most obvious question of every citizen who is responsible to his nation's transformation is, "What can I do in this situation?
— Sunday Adelaja
If you are looking for answers for your life, know that the answers are within you. When you close your eyes, and focus on your inner God (meditate), you will know what to do. Trust yourself!
— Camilla Dorand
For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, “Christ’s love compels us” (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I’d tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother’s beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this.
— Gregory A. Boyd, Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty
If we in Nigeria and Africa generally are to experience a true national transformation, we must purposefully begin a campaign for national reorientation.
— Sunday Adelaja
National Transformation must begin with every citizen of the land.
— Sunday Adelaja
Unless you learn how to love yourself first, you will not be able to truly love anyone else
— Camilla Dorand, Back to Me: Changing How I Feel About My Mother, My Body, and Men
The transformation of a nation is impossible without God's grace.
— Sunday Adelaja
The goal of the human experience is to transform ourselves from being who long to attain power in the physical world to beings who are empowered from within.
— Caroline Myss
Opening/Starters are the inspirational pattern of Transformation.
— Gia Combs-Ramirez, The Way of Transformation: Discovering The Divine Map to Unlock Your Highest Potential
And so there must be in life something like a catastrophic turning point, when the world as we know it ceases to exist. A moment that transforms us into a different person from one heartbeat to the next. The moment when a lover confesses that there's someone else and that he's leaving. Or the day we bury a father or mother or best friend. Or the moment when the doctor informs us of a malignant brain tumor. Or are such moments merely the dramatic conclusions of lengthier processes, conclusions we could have foreseen if we had only read the portents rather than disregarding them?And if these turning points are real, are we aware of them as they happen, or do we recognize the discontinuity only much later, in hindsight?
— Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
For transformation to be successful, we the people must first liberate ourselves and our brethren from the clutches of religion.
— Sunday Adelaja
No matter how talented you are, if you don't persist the probability of achieving your goals is extremely small".
— Camilla Dorand, Back to Me: Changing How I Feel About My Mother, My Body, and Men
Transformation as a psycho emotional phenomenon functions as a loop: changing the way you perceive Change
— Priyavrat Thareja
Transformational tools enhance one's clarity, competence, compassion, and empower you to achieve anything that seems impossible to you and others.
— Vishwas Chavan
God's principles of national transformation will give the opportunity to make positive changes in the country, overcoming crisis in politics, economy, social services and other spheres.
— Sunday Adelaja
How does one become butterfly?' Pooh asked pensively.'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,' Piglet replied.'You mean to die?' asked Pooh.'Yes and now,' he answered. 'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will live on.
— A.A. Milne
All people want to belong to some sort of hierarchy. Allow me to explain. The rich want to be the richest; the poor want to be the smartest; those who are both rich and smart want to be the better persons; the better persons want to go to heaven; those who are in heaven will look down upon those who are in hell... there is always some kind of hierarchy desired by everyone; even by those who claim the opposite of this. So how do you find true divinity? Divinity is found in those who reach down low; because it is those who are above who must reach down low, while it is those who are below who must constantly reach for what is above! And this is divinity. What is divine, is what will have a curiosity in what is below. There is no fear of becoming "tainted"; because what is lesser can never really taint what is greater. it is what is greater that is able to transform what is lesser. The alchemist must first find the mud, pick it up, before she is able to transform it into diamond. She must first reach into the swamp, in order to pull out roses.
— C. JoyBell C.
It is not love that transforms the world, but pity.
— Clara Winter, The Starless Chronicles
When we write down our dreams we transform what we imagine into reality.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road
When actors encounter a mishap during a stage performance,they transform it for good purpose by employing a technique called,“use the difficulty.” How can you “use the difficulty” in your life?
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road
Transformation is something that obsesses me. What is the soul? Is there a difference between something like a soul and something like a self? Is our identity something we construct, or is it organic and natural? There are all kinds of theories.
— Christopher Barzak
Everybody in those days was a foreigner, no matter where they were born; as industrial modernization had its way with people and places, no one was native to the transformation of the United States from an agricultural economy to the foremost industrial power in the world--the factory being both the cause and the effect of an act of becoming, the likes of which nobody had ever seen before.
— Jerry Herron
To be American is to be part of a dialogical and democratic operation that grapples with the challenge of being human in an open-ended and experimental manner. Although America is a romantic project in which a paradise, a land of dreams, is fanned and fueled with a religion of vast possibility, it is, more fundamentally, a fragile experiment-precious yet precarious-of dialogical and democratic human endeavor that yields forms of modern self-making and self-creating unprecedented in human history. From Thomas Jefferson to Elijah Muhammad, Geronimo to Dorothy Day, Jane Adams to Nathaniel West, it holds out the possibility of self-transformation and self-reliance to New World dwellers willing to start anew and recast themselves for the purpose of deliverance and betterment. This purpose requires only a restlessness, energy and boldness that galvanizes people to organize and mobilize themselves in a way that makes new opportunities and possibilities credible and worth the
— Cornel West
We don't have to seek new economic systems. We have to transform the people who run them.
— Sadghuru
Does a caterpillar sit on the same leaf when it's a butterfly? No! It goes for a little fly and sees something of the world. Does the tadpole stay in the same pond once it's a frog? No! It stretches its legs, goes for a jump, explores other waters. Did Cinderella go back cleaning hearths once she married the prince? ... Transformation means moving forward. If a butterfly stays on the same leaf and a frog stays in the same pond, then they may as well have stayed a caterpillar or a tadpole. There was no point in metamorphosing.
— Holly Smale, Model Misfit
A child, obeying his father and mother, goes wherever he is told, east or west, south or north. And the yin and yang - how much more are they to a man than father or mother! Now that they have brought me to the verge of death, if I should refuse to obey them, how perverse I would be! What fault is it of theirs? The Great Clod burdens me with form, labors me with life, eases me in old age, and rests me in death. So if I think well of my life, for the same reason I must think well of my death. When a skilled smith is casting metal, if the metal should leap up and say, 'I insist upon being made into a Moye!' he would surely regard it as very inauspicious metal indeed. Now, having had the audacity to take on human form once, if I should say, 'I don't want to be anything but a man! Nothing but a man!', the Creator would surely regard me as a most inauspicious sort of person. So now I think of heaven and earth as a great furnace, and the Creator as a skilled smith. Where could he send me that would not be all right? I will go off to sleep peacefully, and then with a start I will wake up.
— Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
Change Your Posture! Change Your LIFE!
— D. Nicole Williams
Skye said when she looked at Lise, she saw a black mark, an aura. Just like the mark on Lise’s thigh, it was a warming. Deenie thought of it now, of Lise and the stretch mark on her thigh. And how the fevered mind of her fevered friend might believe anything. But also, somewhere inside, it felt the smallest bit true. That the stretch mark was a kind of witch’s mark, the blot of Lise’s body that reminded you of what she had been -a plump, awkward girl- before the lithesome beauty took her place. It was a kind of witchcraft, that transformation.
— Megan Abbott
...if we're to experience change in our very nature, we need to enter the cocoon of the Word of God. When you sit in your lounge room or your favorite chair reading the Bible, think caterpillar. It's like you're spinning your own spiritual cocoon.It's in the confines of the cocoon that the unseen work is done in the caterpillar...This is exactly what happens to us when we abide in the Word of God. It's here He can do His greatest work in us. As we commit to this process we too will experience internal transformation that in time will cause external change.
— Christine Caine
Oh Jesus, oh Zeus, oh Odin,” Anya dropped the stick and started shaking. “Oh shit.” The bird spread out its wings, which slowly transformed back into arms and the rest followed until it was a man once more.
— Amy Kuivalainen, Cry of the Firebird
The anxious wait lasted four years, and the alert ears never despaired of hearing, at any moment, the voice of the great conch shell which would bellow through the hills to announce to all that Macandal had completed the cycle of his metamorphoses, and stood poised once more, sinewy and hard, with testicles like rocks, on his own human legs" (36-37).
— Alejo Carpentier
He turns the key.Presto!It opens this book of odd taleswhich transform the Brothers Grimm.Transform?As if an enlarged paper clipcould be a piece of sculpture.(And it could.)
— Anne Sexton
When you love something or someone it transforms that thing or person. When you allow yourself to be loved, it transforms you.
— Laura   Lane, Two Mothers, One Prayer: Facing your Child's Cancer with Hope, Strength, and Courage
Manipulating or controlling others through the use of one's illness or suffering,for example,was-and remains-extremely effective for people who find they cannot be direct in their interactions,Who argues with someone who is in pain? And if pain is the only power a person has,health is not an attractive replacement. It was apparent to me that becoming healthy represented more than just getting over an illness. Health represented a complex progression into a state of personal empowerment in which one had to move from a condition of vulnerability to one of invincibility,from victim to victor,from silent bystander to aggressive defender of personal boundaries.Completing this race to the finish was a yeoman's task if ever there was one.Indeed,in opening the psyche and soul to the healing process,we had expanded the journey of wellness into one of personal transformation."-
— Caroline Myss, Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason
As you become your own advocate and your own steward, your life will beautifully transform.
— Miranda J. Barrett, A Woman's Truth: A Life Truly Worth Living
The road less traveled continues to beckon me onward, towards a journey of transformation and engagement.
— Marquita Burke-DeJesus, Radically Ordinary
Just saying an intention and leaving it at that will not necessarily result in an outcome, if there is a stronger, more primal belief behind the scenes.
— Miranda J. Barrett, A Woman's Truth: A Life Truly Worth Living
The thing about life, about change, is there are always lessons. Some are subtle, others not, and sometimes it takes being ripped out of your comfort zone to finally get it—then it’s transformative.
— Lorii Myers
Transcendence is transformation.
— Peter Watts, Echopraxia
Break your bad labels instead of living in them.
— Orrin Woodward
There is Irish Spring, but there is no fall soap.
— Jerry Mooney, History Yoghurt and the Moon
The practice of tantra is about inner-transformation. The energy involved in the process of tantric transformation is the energy of our own bliss.
— Prana Gogia
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed
— Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days
The change, I think, that conversion gradually effects on your heart is this: you come, over some stretched-out time, to want to do the things that God wants you to do, because you want to be close to Him.
— Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God
Your transformation will be the miracle.
— Holly Lynn Payne, DAMASCENA - The Tale of Roses and Rumi
The power to change is already within you, ready to be discovered. Find new methods to deal with old routines. It is up to you to make the conscious choices that bring a better future.
— Lynn C. Tolson, Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story
Don't be so stuck in a situation or feeling that when the tide turns you can't see the transformation or manifestation. The caterpillar eventually turns into a butterfly. You will need to determine which perspective you will see.
— Laticia Dezell
If the majority cannot be punished then they can only be transformed
—  and the transformation requires change of heart.
Innocence crafts its own demise.
— F.T. McKinstry, Crowharrow
Nobody really metamorphoses. Cinderella is always Cinderella, just in a nicer dress. The Ugly Duckling was always a swan, just a smaller version. And I bet the tadpole and the caterpillar still feel the same, even when they're jumping and flying, swimming and floating.Just like I am now.
— Holly Smale, Geek Girl
Transformation without work and pain, without suffering, without a sense of loss is just an illusion of true change.
— William Paul Young, Cross Roads
Caterpillars can fly, if they just lighten up.
— Scott J. Simmerman Ph.D.
In certain companyOften the uninvitedWe reactWe transform one another
— Michele L. Rivera, Something in Return
Death is the great disruptor; it thrusts us opposite life’s mirror, invites our truthful exploration, and reveals the naked truth; from which rebirth is possible and we are free to reinvent ourselves anew.
— B.G. Bowers
Too late for that now,” the Eldest Leprechaun said. “The damage is done. Give the thing a name, and it takes shape. They gave a name and a shape to the force that’s always hated us. It’s everything we’re not. It’s New Ireland, it’s money for money’s sake, brown paper envelopes stuffed full of bribes—the turn of mind that says that the old’s only good for theme parks, and the new is all there needs to be. It’s been getting stronger and stronger all this while.And now that it’s more important to the people living in the city than we are, it’s become physically real.
— Andrew M. Greeley, Emerald Magic: Great Tales of Irish Fantasy
The desire to remake that shrinking expanse of life they were still allotted, to make use of it, to fill it up with possibility. Oh please: one more transformation.
— Dan Chaon, Stay Awake
Getting unstuck is a matter of choice. If you want flourish in life make a choice today to move into that reality. You can do it.
— Sereda Aleta Dailey, Stress Relief for Your Body & Mind
Do you think we find Jesus, or does He find us?" (140+Likes on FB)
— J.I. Willett, Affairs of the Heart - God's Messages to the World
We could never muster the strength to make lasting changes in our lives. That's why we must rely on God's strength to transform us.
— Alisa Hope Wagner, Eve of Awakening
If a change in our lives require individually or socially painful sacrifices, it will be difficult to put into effect no matter how necessary that change might be. However, if we start down the road of transformation with simple, enjoyable, and tangible changes, we will soon be prepared to tackle larger issues.
— Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential
It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth.
— Thomas   Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
Yellow decided to risk for a butterfly.For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own.'Imagine, I didn't even know I could do this. That's some encouragement that i'mon the right track. If I have the stuff inside me to make cocoons—maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too.
— Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers
Learning how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There'd be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn't know how not to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.
— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
The Hindus believe that in the beginning was sound, a pure vibrational ohm, and as I surf these wave emanations I feel like I've locked onto the fundamental frequency. Seconds go by on the outside but inside it's eternity, outside time and space and back where it all began...
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
If Roman Catholic Christianity has always struggled with the threat of works righteousness, Reformed Protestantism has always struggled with the threat of cheap grace. For many, if not the majority of Protestants, God's love and acceptance do not lead to personal transformation. Evangelical formation often involves seeking to reestablish a pattern of maturing behaviour that should be integral to one's conversion. So both traditions can be challenged on whether there is a genuinely helpful connection between conversion and transformation.
— Gordon T. Smith, Beginning Well: Christian Conversion & Authentic Transformation
Stripping away the scientific language, what you find is that our most eminent minds agree that on the subatomic and quantum scales the universe is full of invisible energies that not only affect our reality, but on a fundamental scale create and support it.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector
— Eva Ibbotson, The Ogre of Oglefort
One must always be careful, for the art of shamanism is fueled by the power of the will, interacting with the power of the plants. And it seems all too easy for some shamans to warp that power to dark ends, to the 'shamachismo' that can drive them to serve selfish ego desires. Power corrupts, and the spirit world can corrupt absolutely if it's not approached from a perspective of openness and servitude.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
I can feel myself gently slipping away into a light trance by the quarter moon light as the candles are blown out, and my last thought is that we have gone back to the jungle, back to the great green womb—we have returned full circle from whence we came…
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
Ayahuasca is a fickle mistress—she likes it when you put out for her, make a show of it, and put some effort in. But ayahuasca is also a plant medicine, and as such she reads you and what you need, and that changes every time, both as you progress on the path and as new issues come to light. Like a high maintenance girlfriend, the relationship with 'aya' can be hard work, but the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
Ayahuasca ceremonies are usually very structured rituals where the shaman or shamana holds the space and guides the drinkers on their journeys of discovery. The shaman is not just administering the hallucinogenic brew; he or she is also calling in their allies, banishing evil spirits, and safeguarding their immediate physical environment–playing the role of psychic bouncer. And while personalities vary, the role of the shaman in anchoring the physical and spiritual worlds is inviolate, and should be treated with respect.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
It is true ayahuasca that has the potential to change everything and allow you to see the world in a different way. It's just that from within the perspective of the person undergoing the changes it's also hard to discern which bits are fantasy and which bits are oracular insight. That's part of what the shaman is supposed to be there to help you figure out.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
Ayahuasca can heal, but it an also be used to kill,' Carlos continues to translate for Juan... The key is remaining humble, being a servant of ayahuasca, not a master. 'Give yourself to the benefit of others, to God,' Juan says, his eyes daring over us, reading our energies. 'You must have a purpose to help other people, a desire to hep others. If you have a pure heart, a humble mind, and faith in your soul--then the Science will open up to you and show you its wonders.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
The sound of his purging next to me, long and deep and often was like a backbeat throughout the night. He's been wrestling with visions of the spirit world, alien landscapes like inverted Photoshop jungle lakes, plants merging into the sky and insects and beasts alive with the sweat and pulse of life, all of us cuaght up in a genomic swirl.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey
Are you seeing Jesus yet? Eric the ayahuasca virgin asks me this morning over a late brunch at the Yellow Rose... We're trading visions like trading card stats, comparing our different curanderos and gossiping like schoolgirls while the street vendors and fabric hustlers stand around by the dozen... 'Am I becoming like Jesus would probably be a better way to explain it,' I respond, and it's true. I feel like I'm walking on water. The aftermath of the ayahuasca experience is glorious: I feel lighter, clearner, like a hard drive that's been defragged and all my pathways are re-linked up to each other, whole, and able to express joy once again. This is what it fees like to be healed, my whole body radiates from the inside-out.
— Rak Razam, Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey