Hugh Prather
Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.Collection: Change
Maturity is wanting nothing but what we see with the purity of our heart.
Boredom or discontent is useful to me when I acknowledge it and see clearly my assumption that there's something else I would rather be doing.
Tomorrow is shallow, but today is as deep as truth.
Now I know that this energy within me is seeking more than the mate or the profession or the religion - more even than pleasure or power or meaning. It is seeking more of me; or better, it is, thank God, releasing more of me.
Discouragement, if pursued, is the exercise of an option: to turn from creative to noncreative mental activity, to turn from what is present to what is over, to turn from that which builds to that which destroys.
We are the only authority on what is good for us. Once we see this, we feel an enormous peace and freedom.
I must act now without knowing the results. Thus, I give my actions their only possible meaning for me.
If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.
Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble.
My only sure reward is in my actions, not from them.
I will be what I will be - and I am now what I am. Here is where I will devote my energy.
Love does not exclude; it embraces. If we don't love someone outside ourselves, then very simply, we do not love ourselves.
I don't want to work to make money. I want to work to work.
Sometimes I doubt, and sometimes I believe. I like not making myself believe when I am doubting and not making myself doubt when I am believing.
How genuine is my capacity for love if there is no one for me to love, to laugh with, to treat tenderly, to be trusted by?
Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain.
Negative feedback is better that none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I make a difference.
To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
The way for me to live is to have no way. My only habit should be to have none. Because I did it this way before is not sufficient reason to do it this way today.
There are people whose feelings and well-being are within our influence. We can never escape this fact.
Ultimately, my character is defined by the quality of my sensitivity to other people. I exist in equilibrium. I am here to the degree I am there.
It is only in helping someone else to awake that I awake.
We are always influenced because we do not live in a vacuum together with our intentions. We are in a relationship with everything that occurs.
No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves.
If I hold back any part of me, I suppress that much energy and potential. The question I want to ask myself now is not what behavior is good or bad, but in what ways would I express myself with greater energy if I didn't hold back.
Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.Collection: Life
There are only three things you need to let go of judging, controlling, and being right. Release these three and you will have the whole mind and twinkly heart of a child.Collection: Letting Go
Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield.Collection: Letting Go
Some people will like me and some won't. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I'll know that the people who like me, like me.Collection: Creativity
When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.Collection: Happiness
Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.Collection: Happiness
There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen.Collection: Action
The fatal mistake is waiting for life's circumstances to be right before we begin. Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel. Practice knowing and you will know.Collection: Mistake
An argument is always about what has been made more important than the relationship.Collection: Relationship
Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side.Collection: Love You
perfectionism is a slow death. if everything were to turn out just like i would want it to, just like i would plan for it to, then i would never experience anything new; my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. when i make a mistake i experience something unexpected.... when i have listened to my mistakes i have grown.Collection: Life
It's this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.Collection: Simple
I am responsible for what I see. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. I could see peace instead of THIS. The past is over it can touch me not. This instant is the only time there is. Today I will judge nothing that occurs. I am not the victim of the world I see. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. I am determined to see things differently. I am never upset for the reason I think. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. All that I give I give to myself.Collection: Letting Go
True humor is fun - it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, and cut off. True humor has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together.Collection: Fun
You're wrong means that I don't understand you, I'm not seeing what you're seeing- and I'm not seeing all of you there is to see. But there is nothing wrong with you. You are what you need to be, doing what you need to be doing, and although I may take steps to protect myself of others, I do not know all and therefore am literally inadequate to judge.Collection: Mean
If a man takes off his sunglasses I can hear him better.Collection: Men
It is enough that I am of value to somebody today.Collection: Inspirational
I can't be found in myself; I discover myself in others. That much is clear. And I suspect that I also love and care for myself in others.Collection: Volunteer
I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.Collection: Betrayal
My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it.Collection: Life
A messy mortal is my friend. Come walk with me in the mud.Collection: Mud
It is your right to be happy. This is what you were made for. And if you will not resist, happiness will find a way to pour from your heart and fill your days.Collection: Heart
Problems assault us to the degree they preoccupy us. The key to release, rest, and inner freedom is not the elimination of all external difficulties. It is letting go of our pattern of reactions to those difficulties.Collection: Letting Go
A whole mind cannot create chaos. A conflicted mind can create nothing else.Collection: Mind