"To acknowledge, to accept, and to forgive one's parents - both what they gave and what they did not give, both one's dependence upon them and one's independence of them - is the ultimate hallmark of maturity: a perception as valid for institutions as for individuals."

--

Source : Ernest Kurtz (2010). “Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous”, p.131, Hazelden Publishing

Ernest Kurtz

#Inspirational Quotes #Maturity Quotes #Giving Quotes

“If the book is finishedâ€”published and on the shelfâ€”I do not think of revising it. But if I'm not finished psychologically with characters, they will recur, either as themselves or as new, slightly altered manifestations, and their same issues will reappear. It's a matter of the subject and emotional investment and my own obsessive thinking about various issues It's an unconscious process. To say that a single story is not done isn't quite true. A story can be finished and judged successful or not by somebody else, but if the issue is not done for me, I can count on its reappearance.”
“Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism. It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.”
“If people would treat themselves with the same kind of love they give to their friends, that would be such a great gift we could give ourselves.”
“Instead of it being the mark of a real man that you can shoot somebody at 50 feet and kill them with a gun, the mark of a real man is that you would never do anything like that. . . . The gun is a great equalizer because it makes wimps as dangerous as people who really have skill and bravery and so I'd like to have this notion that anyone using a gun is a wuss. They aren't anybody to be looked up to. They're somebody to look down at because they couldn't defend themselves or couldn't protect others without using a gun.”
“Seek the truth, not what is comfortable. Seek the real, not the easy.”
“The paradox is that, while a concern with past and future is obviously central to psychological functioning, to behave as though one were indeed in the past or future, as many do, pollutes the lively possibilities of existence.”

Source : Erving Polster, Miriam Polster (1973). “Gestalt therapy integrated: contours of theory and practice”
“I date, but the person I date most is myself, unfortunately.”
“We are to order our lives by the light of His Law, not by our guesses about His plan.”

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