“What is the right woman, the right man? Someone who wants to go in the same direction as you do, someone who is compatible with your views and your values – emotionally, physically, economically, spiritually.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“We try to be responsible for the other half, and that is why relationships in hell are based on fear, drama, and the war of control.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“Anger is nothing but fear with a mask. Sadness is fear with a mask. Jealousy is fear with a mask.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“Love is ruthless; it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion. Fear is full of pity; it feels sorry for everyone.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“Love has no obligations. Fear is full of obligations. Love has no expectations. Fear is full of expectations. That is why fear hurts and love doesn’t hurt. We expect something and if it doesn’t happen, we feel hurt – it isn’t fair. That is why hardly anything hurts us when we are in love.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“In a relationship, we can pretend to be the same, to think the same, to feel the same, to dream the same, but there is no way that can happen. There are two dreamers with two dreams. We need to respect each other’s dream.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“The limit of your self-abuse is the limit you will tolerate from other people. If someone abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you walk away, you run, you escape. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, perhaps you stay longer.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

“Wisdom literature points you in a general direction, but you will not gain the wisdom until you have walked the path yourself.” – Shaun Roundy

“Reconsider that everyone you deem unworthy, stupid, and intolerable provides a perfect opportunity to learn how to love unconditionally.” – Shaun Roundy

“Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what arrives when all your woe is behind you and you have only bliss to look forward to, but that would not be nirvana because your bliss in the present would always be shadowed by the [woe] from the past. Nirvana is what you arrive at when you have only bliss to look forward to and find in what looked like sorrows, the seedlings of your joy.” – Andrew Solomon

“I want my children to be happy, and I love them achingly when they are sad, but I believe that if I succeed in sheltering them from adversity, I will have failed as a parent.” – Andrew Solomon

“If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes.” – Andrew Solomon

“It took identity to rescue me from sadness.” – Andrew Solomon

“Oppression breeds the power to oppose it, and I gradually understood that as the cornerstone of identity.” – Andrew Solomon

“We don’t seek the painful experiences that hew our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences. We can not bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it’s purposeful.” – Andrew Solomon

“Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle. We could have been ourselves without our delights, but not without our misfortunes that drive our search for meaning.” – Andrew Solomon

“Take the traumas and make them part of who you’ve come to be, and fold the worst events of your life into a narrative of triumph, evincing a better self in response to things that hurt.” – Andrew Solomon

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Revision is when you do what you should have done the first time, but didn’t.” – Colson Whitehead

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

“For some men, nothing is written unless they write it.” – Sherif Ali, Lawrence of Arabia

“When we look for the worst in anyone, we will find it. But if we will concentrate on the best, that element will grow until it sparkles.” – Gordon B. Hinckley

“By changing nothing, nothing changes.” – Tony Robbins

“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Willie Nelson

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.” – Helen Keller

“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell

“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Franklin P. Jones

“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.'” – Erich Fromm

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James

“To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.” – Charles de Montesquieu

“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.” – John F. Kennedy

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Feelings are liars. Don’t believe them. Don’t obey them.” – Shaun Roundy

“When we give up craving, only then does the pain stop.” – Buddha

“It is not what I am saying that is hurting you, it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself.” – Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements bit.ly/fouragree

“Human beings are radically different from the rest of life on earth. We have imaginations. As a result we have unlimited powers of creativity.” – Sir Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds

“When something or someone annoys you, it reveals a friction point that exists entirely inside you. If you know how to heal such feelings, then annoyance is a valuable opportunity to free yourself from your limitations and one of the greatest blessings that life can provide.” -Shaun Roundy