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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity. James Fenimore Cooper		Friday Nov 22, 2024
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

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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. Hugh Prather

Quote Author: Hugh Prather

Hugh Prather

Hugh Prather

Hugh Prather (January 23, 1938 - ) is an author, minister, and counselor who is most famous for his first book, Notes to Myself (ISBN 0-553-27382-5), which was first published 1970, sold over 5 million copies and has been translated into 10 languages.[1].

Together with his second wife, Gayle Prather, to whom he has been married since 1965, he has authored other books including The Little Book of Letting Go; How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy; I Will Never Leave You: How Couples Can Achieve The Power Of Lasting Love; Spiritual Notes to Myself: Essential Wisdom for the 21st Century; Shining Through: Switch on Your Life and Ground Yourself in Happiness; Spiritual Parenting: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing the Heart of Your Child; Standing on My Head: Life Lessons in Contradictions; A Book of Games: A Course in Spiritual Play; Love and Courage; Notes to Each Other; A Book for Couples; The Quiet Answer; and There is a Place Where You Are Not Alone.

Born in Dallas Texas, Prather earned a bachelor's degree at Southern Methodist University in 1966 after study at Principia College and Columbia University. He studied at the University of Texas at the graduate level without taking a degree. While he could be categorized as a New Age writer, he draws on Christian language and themes and seems comfortable conceiving of God in personal terms. His work underscores the importance of gentleness, forgiveness, and loyalty; declines to endorse dramatic claims about the power of the individual mind to effect unilateral transformations of external material circumstances; and stresses the need for the mind to let go of destructive cognitions in a manner not unlike that encouraged by the cognitive-behavioral therapy of Aaron T. Beck and the rational emotive behavior therapy commended by Albert Ellis.

Other Hugh Prather Quotes

My trouble is I analyze life instead of live it.

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.'

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

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

Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.

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.

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

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fault means failure to meet a standard. Whose? Mine.

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.

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.