Hugh Prather Quotes (26 Quotes)

Love expands.

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

Fears, indecision, and frustration feed on words. Without words they usually stop.... Words are at times good for looking back, but they are confining when I need to act in the present.

Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble.

If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

I want you to be able to say anything. Even what you don't mean.

My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it.

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

Fault means failure to meet a standard. Whose Mine.

The heart loves, but moods have no loyalty. Moods should be heard but never danced to

Do I avoid looking a stranger in the eyes because I don't want to make him uncomfortable, or do I turn my eyes so he can't look into me What is in there that I don't want him to see.

I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.

Sometimes when I generalize, I am saying, 'Let's pretend I am God,' and of course the other person argues that point endlessly. But I notice that if the other person takes a stand for himself and states his thoughts as his thoughts, I pay more attention to what he is saying and look deeper in myself.

Negative feedback is better that none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I make a difference.

Support your friends even in their mistakes. But be clear, however, that it is the friend and not the mistake you are supporting.

It's not that we fear the place of darkness but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.

When someone disagrees with me, I do not have to immediately start revising what I just said. People don't want me to always agree with them. They can sense this is phony. They can sense I am trying to control them I am agreeing with them to make them like me. They feel 'I don't want to exist to like you. I DON'T exist to like you.'

Perfectionism is a slow death. If everything were to just like I would want it to, just like I would plan for it to, then I would never experience anything new my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. When I make a mistake I experience something unexpected.

Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain.

I can not 'make my mark' for all time those concepts are mutually exclusive. 'Lasting effect' is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately.' Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now.

Very seldom will a person give up on himself. He continues to have hope because he knows he has the potential for change. He tries again not just to exist, but to bring about those changes in himself that will make life worth living. Yet people are very quick to give up on friends, and especially on their spouses, to declare them hopeless, and to either walk away or do nothing more than resign themselves to a bad situation.

Within me is the potential to commit every evil act I see being committed by other men, and unless I feel this potential, I can at any moment be controlled by these same urges. I am free from these urges only if I recognize when I am feeling them, and while feeling them and acknowledging them to be me, choose not to follow them. Only in this way can I begin to regain the disowned parts of me. And only in this way can I know what it is I am criticizing in others.

Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.

Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.

Life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats-with very few moments of clear peace.