Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.
ROLLO MAYOne central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.
More Rollo May Quotes
-
-
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 -
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.
ROLLO MAY -
Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.
ROLLO MAY -
Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.
ROLLO MAY -
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
ROLLO MAY -
This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.
ROLLO MAY -
Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.
ROLLO MAY -
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.
ROLLO MAY -
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
ROLLO MAY -
All people are struggling to be creative in some way, and the artist is the one who has succeeded in this task of life.
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 -
Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
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 -
All our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.
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