For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations.
The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told: ‘Because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness.’
Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do.
Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.
In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.
It’s not that achievements prove our worth but rather that the process of achieving is the means by which we develop our effectiveness, our competence at living.
Integrity means congruence. Words and behavior match.
One of the hardest expressions of self-assertiveness is challenging your limiting beliefs.
Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other’s person.
Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.
The music that inspires the souls of lovers exists within themselves and the private universe they occupy. They share it with each other; they do not share it with the tribe or with society. The courage to hear that music and to honor it is one of the prerequisites of romantic love.
Integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs-and behavior. When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match up, we have integrity.
To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals – to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be – and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know.
Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender -not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.
There is no value-judgment more important to a man – no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation – than the estimate he passes on himself.
It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.
There is only one reality – the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all.
One of the characteristics of love relationships that flower is a relatively high degree of mutual self-disclosure.
It is very difficult to accept in others emotions you cannot accept in yourself.