Humor is the healthy way of feeling “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective.
ROLLO MAYAll our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
More Rollo May Quotes
-
-
The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
ROLLO MAY -
It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.
ROLLO MAY -
Courage is required not only in a person’s occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.
ROLLO MAY -
A mien which seems to say, “You are looking at somebody now.” For this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
ROLLO MAY -
It is amazing how many hints and guides and intuitions for living come to the sensitive person who has ears to hear what his body is saying.
ROLLO MAY -
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.
ROLLO MAY -
Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
ROLLO MAY -
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 MAY -
A dynamic struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks on the one hand and, on the other, some insight, some perspective that is struggling to be born.
ROLLO MAY -
Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, “This is me and the world be damned!” Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society – Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.
ROLLO MAY -
Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day.
ROLLO MAY -
Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.
ROLLO MAY -
Fortunately, however, we no longer have to argue that self -love is not only necessary and good but that it also is a prerequisite for loving others.
ROLLO MAY -
Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
ROLLO MAY -
Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.
ROLLO MAY