Mark Nepo Quotes

Quotes about:

• To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

  Mark Nepo

  Love, Change, Giving Up

  86 Copy quote

• The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

  Mark Nepo

  Light, Broken, Water

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.24, Conari Press

  68 Copy quote

• To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

  Mark Nepo

  Changed, Willingness

  40 Copy quote

• What will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? Tomorrow you could die, but today you are precious and rare and awake. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.

  Mark Nepo

  Grateful, Hands, Knowing

  "The Book of Awakening". Book by Mark Nepo, abcnews.go.com. 2000.

  65 Copy quote

• No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their hearts.

  Mark Nepo

  Heart, Wings, Bird

  6 Copy quote

• We think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.

  Mark Nepo

  Thinking

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.59, Conari Press

  33 Copy quote

• Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color.... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are.

  Mark Nepo

  Thinking, Compassion, Blue

  Mark Nepo (2000). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have”, p.150, Conari Press

  48 Copy quote

• When the sweet ache of being alive, lodged between who you are and who you will be, is awakened, befriend this moment. It will guide you. Its sweetness is what holds you. Its ache is what moves you on.

  Mark Nepo

  Sweet, Moving, Alive

  Mark Nepo (2015). “The Endless Practice: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

  13 Copy quote

• The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.

  Mark Nepo

  Keys, Knowing, Joy

  Mark Nepo (2012). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want By Being Present in the Life You Have”, p.16, Hachette UK

  67 Copy quote

• To journey without being changed, is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim.

  Mark Nepo

  Journey, Changed, Pilgrim

  "Insights at the Edge" with Tami Simon, www.soundstrue.com. July 12, 2014.

  46 Copy quote

• There are many ways that we grow, but there are two major ways: We shed what no longer works, or we're broken open. If we're unwilling to shed, then we will be broken open. Through shedding, we are worn down, just as nature is eroded to its beauty. I think that through suffering, human beings are eroded to our beauty.

  Mark Nepo

  Thinking, Two, Broken

  "Journey to the Sacred: An Interview With Mark Nepo". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 13, 2013.

  67 Copy quote

• My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or been listened to, experience burns like wood in that eternal fire, and I find myself in the presence of love. This has always been so.

  Mark Nepo

  Powerful, Believe, Fire

  Mark Nepo (2007). “The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life”, p.27, Harmony

  28 Copy quote

• Grief can be a slow ache that never seems to stop rising, yet as we grieve, those we love mysteriously become more and more a part of who we are.

  Mark Nepo

  Grief, Loss, Grieving

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.384, Conari Press

  4 Copy quote

• I've learned that loving your self requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self worth.

  Mark Nepo

  Believe, Self Worth, Loving You

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.29, Conari Press

  13 Copy quote

• Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us.

  Mark Nepo

  Moving, Wind, Roots

  Mark Nepo (2011). “As Far As the Heart Can See: Stories to Illuminate the Soul”, p.2, Health Communications, Inc.

  14 Copy quote

• We work so hard to get somewhere, to realize a dream, to arrive at some destination, that we often forget that though some satisfaction may be waiting at the end of our endurance and effort, there is great and irreplaceable aliveness in the steps along the way.

  Mark Nepo

  Dream, Effort, Waiting

  "Approaching Integrity" by Mark Nepo, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 12, 2013.

  26 Copy quote

• But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.

  Mark Nepo

  Hurt, Giving Up, Reality

  FaceBook post by Mark Nepo from May 22, 2012

  38 Copy quote

• We are born with only one obligation - to be completely who we are.

  Mark Nepo

  Who We Are, Born, Obligation

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.11, Conari Press

  21 Copy quote

• Just opening quietly for moments everyday can create a path by which life can reach us, the way rain carves a little stream in the earth by which the smallest flowers are watered.

  Mark Nepo

  Rain, Flower, Everyday

  Mark Nepo (2012). “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred”, p.287, Simon and Schuster

  19 Copy quote

• Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.

  Mark Nepo

  Life, Fall, Worry

  FaceBook post by Mark Nepo from Jul 24, 2012

  13 Copy quote

• The broken door lets in the light. The broken heart lets in the world.

  Mark Nepo

  Heart, Light, Doors

  Mark Nepo (2014). “The Endless Practice: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• Through the opened heart, the world comes rushing in, the way oceans fill the smallest hole along the shore. It is the quietest sort of miracle: by simply being who we are, the world will come to fill us, to cleanse us, to baptize us, again and again.

  Mark Nepo

  Ocean, Heart, Rushing

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.111, Conari Press

  34 Copy quote

• When we heal ourselves, we heal the world.

  Mark Nepo

  World, Heal, Heal The World

  Mark Nepo (2000). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have”, p.388, Conari Press

  54 Copy quote

• All the buried seeds crack open in the dark the instant they surrender to a process they can't see.

  Mark Nepo

  Dark, Cracks, Surrender

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.113, Conari Press

  35 Copy quote

• Each of us carries some wisdom waiting to be discovered at the center of our experience. Everything we meet, if faced and held, reveals a part of that wisdom.

  Mark Nepo

  Waiting, Carrie, Ifs

  FaceBook post by Mark Nepo from Jan 30, 2015

  39 Copy quote

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