Hugh Prather Quotes

Lord, give me the heart of a child, and the awesome courage to live it out as an adult.

One of the most responsible things you can do as an adult is to become more of a child.

In the true man there is a child concealed who wants to play.

I've never outgrown my childhood.

I feel like I'm five sometimes because I still enjoy myself. I enjoy what I do.

And that's what innocence is. It's simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.

We're children. We're supposed to be childish.

Let your heart travel lightly. Because what you bring with you becomes part of the landscape.

Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!

When you were young, and your heart, was an open book. You used to say, live and let live.

there is no need to justify what we are. there is no need to work hard to become what we are not. we just need to return to our intergrity, to the way we were before we learned to speak. perfect. as little children, we are authentic. only the present time is real for us; wo don't care about the past, and we aren't worried about the future. we enjoy life; we want to explore and have fun. nobody teaches us to be that way; we are born that way.

All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect. That place is called freedom. It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .

Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

Animals, children, and the working class comprise the company in which I'll feel most at ease.

If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

Judge not; speak hardly at all; love and act.

Let whatever's going to happen, happen. Don't judge it before you do it. Sure, sometimes it will be terrible, but sometimes it will just be amazing. That's where the gold is.

See the world as if for the first time; see it through the eyes of a child, and you will suddenly find that you are free.

The lovers of life, they are children at heart always in their wonder and delight, but they do not grab.

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.

Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in the bosom of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments?

No matter how sophisticated our lives may be we need to think of ourselves as creative children.

Children are loving, they don't gossip, they don't complain, they're just openhearted. They're ready for you. They don't judge. They don't see things by way of color. They're very child-like. That's the problem with adults: they lose that child-like quality.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.