Isabel Allende Quotes

The sun came through the branches of the tree above her, and Ruth looked up past them. "I think she listens," she said, too softly to be heard.

People are timid and apologetic; they are no longer upright; they dare not say "I think," "I am," but quote some saint or sage. They are ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.

Each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priest craft, and tyranny - pray day and night for them. I am no meta physician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor.... Let these people be your God - think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly - the Lord will show you the way.

I believe deeply that we must find a new spirituality... in such a way that all people of good will could adhere to it... We ought to promote this concept with the help of scientists... It could lead us to what we are looking for.

Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness of an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant... to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misforture.

Everybody predicted that Donald Trump was going to lose. And I just think it was the hand of God. I think God intervened and put his hand on Donald Trump for some reason. It's obvious that there was something behind this. And it was more than people understand. And I just think it was God.

The actors that I do know are people who I think have souls, you know?

The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.

I think sometimes you can grow up with faith, or if you're just the kind of animal who grabs onto it or doesn't grab onto it. I wasn't a big grabbing-onto-it kind of animal. I found my faith to be more about my belief, my spirituality, about nature.

I don't think the music industry has done any damage to my faith - it's probably strengthened it because it's made me see how necessary and relevant it is. I think if you don't keep your guard up, obviously there's a lot of potential for being half-hearted throughout the whole process because you can compare yourself to other people instead of the ultimate standard.

When you get out onto a glacier that's the size of Northern Ireland and it's so vast, and you're standing on top of it and you can see forever, it's so pure and clear that you can see for miles and miles and miles. You really do think, "Wow, there is a god!" You feel very humbled.

The Jewish culture - people that are Jewish have a certain cultural habit that they've formed and one of those habits is an appreciation of theater and music - these are cultural things one does associate with values that are promulgated by Jewish families. I think that's a good thing.

I've seen optimism because I grew up in communities of recovery where people put their lives back together and find tomorrows that they didn't think would be there. That fundamentally changed my life and is so much of where my hope comes from.

People think that if [their abusive] parent apologizes, he'll turn into the person they needed him to be. He won't. An apology might help, but you can change your life without one.

My definition of prosperity would be quite different than what most people probably imagine or think, because I think that a wholeness word that means nothing missing, nothing broken. It's not finances or materialism.

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only...from human relationships. God has placed it all around us...and all you have to do is reach for it.

The appeal of the New Right is simply that it seems to promise that nothing will change in the domestic realm. People are terrified of change there, because it's the last humanizing force left in society, and they think, correctly, that it must be retained.

It is one of the strange facts of experience that when we try to think about the future, our thoughts jump backwards. It may well be that nature has some fundamental metaphysical law by which opening up what we call the future also opens up the past in equal degree.

At the very simplest, I think as Van Gogh said and St Francis would have said, we must find nature. Just to be in the presence of nature your feelings and 'little seedlings' start to awake. So if we disassociate ourselves from God we cut nature out, too. More and more we turn nature into a commodity, into eco-tourism. But we must integrate it into the way people live every day.

I think I have terminal curiosity. So I always think that the future will be better and different than the past. As I look back and take inventory of myself, I'm very open-minded and flexible. People say the older you get, you get set in your ways. I don't think so.

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.

I've always been taught to care what other people think. My grandmother and mother taught me to project a positive image of myself.

Some people think they have discernment when actually they are just suspicious. Suspicion comes out of the unrenewed mind; discernment comes out of the renewed spirit.

People in the world wish to make things rigid, things which are of the finest nature which words cannot explain. When a person describes the hereafter, it is just like wanting to weigh the soul or photograph the spirit. I personally think that you must be able to realize yourself what the hereafter is. You must not depend upon my words.

It is the abiding concern of thinking people to preserve what keeps men human-to save our contact with nature of which we are a part.