Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
ROLLO MAYThe first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
More Rollo May Quotes
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It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.
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Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
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When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.
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I learned that healing and cure are active processes in which I myself needed to participate.
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Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.
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The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.
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Does not the possibility or the power to do something about the situation at hand confer on one the responsibility to do it?
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All our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
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Depression is the inability to construct a future.
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The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.
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Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.
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The first thing necessary for a constructive dealing with time is to learn to live in the reality of the present moment. For psychologically speaking, this present moment is all we have.
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In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person’s development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.
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To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive – to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
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The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.
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One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.
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It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
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Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
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Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.
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The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them.
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Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him.
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A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
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Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.
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There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular – though profoundly mistaken – definition of myth as falsehood.
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Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.
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There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.
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