The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly
ROLLO MAYWhen you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.
More Rollo May Quotes
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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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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.
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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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Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age.
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Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day.
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Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.
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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.
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Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
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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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Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
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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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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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Competitive individualism militates against the experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important factor in contemporaneous anxiety.
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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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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 MAY