Hugh Prather quotes:

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  • Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.

  • 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.

  • Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behavior, trying new ways of 'being myself', so that I can see who it is I want to be.

  • Whenever I find myself arguing for something with great passion, I can be certain I'm not convinced.

  • Perfectionism is slow death.

  • Egos clash. That's the nature of egos.Treat these outbursts as sneezing fits.

  • Books seek us out. They slip themselves into our hands just at the time we are ready for a new self-concept.

  • Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain.

  • Don't fight a fact, deal with it.

  • Moods should be heard but never danced to.

  • When I have listened to my mistakes, I have grown.

  • The components of happiness are quite simple. Happiness is gentleness, peace, concentration, simplicity, forgiveness, humor, fearlessness, trust, and now. In its true form each quality includes all the rest, for happiness is whole, and one feels whole when genuinely happy.

  • 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.

  • Life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats-with very few moments of clear peace.

  • A messy mortal is my friend. Come walk with me in the mud.

  • All my life, I have made it complicated, but it is so simple. I love when I love. And when I love, I am myself.

  • Because the results are unpredictable, no effort of mine is doomed to failure.

  • 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 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.

  • Boredom is useful to me when I notice it and think: Oh I'm bored; there must be something else I want to be doing... boredom acts as an initiator of originality by pushing me into new activities or new thoughts.

  • If my attention is wandering, there is somewhere it wants to go, so obviously it does not want to be where I am holding it in the name of some self-styled obligation.

  • I don't need a "reason" to be happy. I don't have to consult the future to know how happy I feel now.

  • Next time I will ...""From now on I will ..."- What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

  • 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.

  • A whole mind cannot create chaos. A conflicted mind can create nothing else.

  • An argument is always about what has been made more important than the relationship.

  • Before, I thought I was actually fighting for my own self-worth; that is why I so desperately wanted people to like me. I thought their liking me was a comment on me, but it was a comment on them.

  • 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. In this way boredom can act as an invitation to freedom by opening me to new options and thoughts. For example, if I can't change the activity, can I look at it more honestly?

  • But it's morning. Within my hands is another day. Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day.

  • By approaching my problems with "What might make things a little better?" rather than "What is the solution?" I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I am only going to chip away at it.

  • Don't strive for love, be it.

  • Every moment that I am centered in the future I suffer a temporary loss of this life.

  • Fears, indecision, and frustration feed on words. Without words they usually stop. . . . Words are at times good for looking back, but they are confining when I need to act in the present.

  • For communication to have meaning it must have a life. It must transcend "you and me" and become "us." If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it. And you see and partake of me. In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new. To have this kind of sharing I cannot enter into a conversation clutching myself. I must enter into it with loose boundaries. I must give myself to the relationship, and be willing to be what grows out of it.

  • Forgive and be happy. That is the ancient secret?the only wisdom ever to be attained.

  • Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.

  • Happiness is gentleness, peace, concentration, simplicity, forgiveness, humor, fearlessness, trust, and now.

  • 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.

  • I can not 'make my mark' for all time - those concepts are mutually exclusive. 'Lasting effect' is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately.' Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now.

  • 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.

  • I like a man with faults, especially when he knows it. To err is human

  • I live now and only now, and I will do what I want to do this moment and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.

  • 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.

  • I talk because I feel, and I talk to you because I want you to know how I feel.

  • If a man takes off his sunglasses I can hear him better.

  • If I work toward an end, meantime I am confined to a process.

  • If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

  • If the ocean was pure mind and I was a wave, I would be in terror if Itried to distinguish myself fromthe water that produced me.What is a wave without water, and what is a mind without God?

  • If your reaction to your partner's fear-or any other form of distress- is disdain or irritation, you do not want oneness or even friendship with your partner at that moment.

  • It is enough that I am of value to somebody today.

  • 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.

  • It seems that the truth is needed today is always a lie by tomorrow.

  • It's not that "today is the first day of the rest of my life," but that now is all there is of my life.

  • It's not that we fear the place of darkness, but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.

  • It's this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.

  • Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.

  • Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield.

  • Letting people in is largely a matter of not expending the energy to keep them out.

  • Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

  • Love itself is not an act of will, but sometimes I need the force of my volition to break with my habitual responses and pass along the love already here.

  • Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side....

  • Many books on communication are strong on theory but impractical on application. Marshall Rosenberg's instant classic is the stand-out exception. It is clear and compelling in its logic and flat-out inspiring in its inviting exposition of usable techniques and strategies. If this book is read by enough people, the world will transform.

  • Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.

  • My prayer is: I will be what I will be, I will do what I will do.

  • My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it.

  • No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves

  • Now that I know that I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me wiser?

  • One element of maturity is the realization that we don't get away with anything. Any advantage gained or convenience taken, any private procrastination or insincerity, no matter how subtle or quick in passing, is paid for.

  • Our job this day is to become part of the answer to the world's immense and protracted suffering rather than continuing our ancient task of being part of the difficulty.

  • Peace, or freedom from conflict, is the absolute core of happiness. It is in learning to watch our sense of peace that we avoid unhappiness. All forms of misery are heralded by a frame of mind that must become immediately recognizable if we are ever to gain mastery in happiness...Take the time to look in your heart and be clear. Walk through life being clear. Practice doing each thing in peace.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Sometimes when I generalize, I am saying, 'Let's pretend I am God,' and of course the other person argues that point endlessly. But I notice that if the other person takes a stand for himself and states his thoughts as his thoughts, I pay more attention to what he is saying and look deeper in myself.

  • Support your friends - even in their mistakes. But be clear, however, that it is the friend and not the mistake you are supporting.

  • The ego, as a collection of our past experiences, is continually offering miserable lines of thought. It's as if there were a stream with little fish swimming by, and when we hook one of them there is a judgment. The ego is constantly judging everybody and everything. It has its constant little chit chat about things that can happen in the future, things about the past, too, and these are the little fish that swim by. And what we learn to do-this is why it takes work-is to not reach out and grab a fish.

  • The first step of letting go: To remove what obstructs your experience of wholeness and peace, you must first look at the obstruction.

  • 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.

  • There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen.

  • There is no place love is not.

  • There is nothing more painful than walking around with bitterness in your heart.

  • There were seventy-five people in the lobby and only a seven-year-old girl was finding out what it felt like to sit on the Marble Floor

  • To avail yourself of His certain wisdom, ask of Him whatever questions you have. But do not entreat Him, for that will never be necessary.

  • To sing with the voice of angels as we do the work of angels. To laugh with the laugh of Buddha as we go to our awakening. To extend the arms of Jesus to welcome the presence of children and let them climb into our hearts.

  • Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don't know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don't know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life.

  • Today I don't want to live for, I want to live.

  • 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.

  • Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues.

  • Very seldom will a person give up on himself. He continues to have hope because he knows he has the potential for change. He tries again - not just to exist, but to bring about those changes in himself that will make life worth living. Yet people are very quick to give up on friends, and especially on their spouses, to declare them hopeless, and to either walk away or do nothing more than resign themselves to a bad situation.

  • We are all saying the same thing in different words.

  • We become what we look at most.

  • We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don't -- and those feelings are probably realistic.

  • What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to find out how things 'really are', when all the time they weren't.

  • When I get to where I can enjoy just lying on the rug picking up lint balls, I will no longer be too ambitious.

  • When someone disagrees with me, I do not have to immediately start revising what I just said. People don't want me to always agree with them. They can sense this is phony. They can sense I am trying to control them: I am agreeing with them to make them like me. They feel; "I don't want to exist to like you. I DON'T exist to like you."

  • When we persist in looking for and finding what there is to value within our self, we discover a pure and loving being.

  • 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.

  • Why choose to be right instead of happy when there is no way to be right?

  • Within me is the potential to commit every evil act I see being committed by other men, and unless I feel this potential, I can at any moment be controlled by these same urges. I am free from these urges only if I recognize when I am feeling them, and while feeling them and acknowledging them to be me, choose not to follow them. Only in this way can I begin to regain the disowned parts of me. And only in this way can I know what it is I am criticizing in others.

  • You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. You are only young once, then you need another reason to act foolish. You are the only authority on what is best for you.

  • 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.

  • Stands must be taken. If I am to respect myself I have to search myself for what I believe is right and take a stand on what I find. Otherwise, I have not gathered together what I have been given; I have not embraced what I have learned; I lack my own conviction.

  • 'Fault' means failure to meet a standard. Whose? Mine.

  • Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency.

  • I'd rather be happy than right.

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