Quotes
​You might enjoy some of these quotes, even with zero context
Many of the quotes below are paraphrased, and I forget some of the authors.
I'm curious to hear if any stood out to you!
From Research
"It's really not about willpower...your brain is using your past in order to predict the future and this becomes your present, you cannot go back into your past and change it, I mean you can try, but what you can do is change your present, which becomes your past, and will lead to a new prediction for the future..you're always cultivating your past!"
-Lisa Feldman Barrett
"Life isn't about the pursuit of happiness, but the happiness of the pursuit."
-Robert Sapolsky
​“Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.”
-Carl Jung
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself for who I am, then I change." -Carl Rogers
"This defense was once very important, but now it is hurting you, it may no longer be necessary."
-Louis Cozolino
"You deserve it." -Charismatic, upselling spa manager,
name unknown​
"What do I want to exist even if I don't, and, how much of a difference am I making to it?"
-John Vervaeke​
On depression and suicide: "we misunderstand that it is our fundamental orientation with the world that must die, and instead assume that it is us, our whole self that must die, not our skewed orientation that must change." -John Vervaeke​
"Name it to tame it, feel it to heal it" -Dan Siegel​
​"Think of emotions as being released in order. If the order cannot be completed, the emotional learning we need to move on, to be safe in the face of the trigger and desensitize from it does not happen. If the scary emotions are not soothed, they stay stuck, ready to be retriggers to protect us. Soothe through compassionate understanding, start by being curious about yourself."
-Tori Olds
"Language helps us stay regulated. Curiosity and descriptions of an experience change our relationship with it. Curiosity requires openness, openness is step towards greater realization, integration, wider perspective, change."​
-Tori Olds
Saying things and writing them down puts them into the world, and once there, our minds can interact with them in a new way. Getting things into the world allows us to evaluate them, think of how we change our minds when we say something out loud. To change an emotional schema, complete the emotional arc, feel the fear and find a juxtaposition, find a piece of evidence in the present moment or past that proves the fearful prediction wrong"
-Tori Olds or Bruce Ecker
"It's not about watching what we say, it's about watching our mood, which shapes what we say."
-Lisa Feldman Barrett
"Meaning is found in relationship with things, like a lock and key. What does it mean to you, and what do you mean to it?"
-John Vervaeke
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From Novels/ Other
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost."
-J.R.R. Tolkien
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” -J.R.R. Tolkien​
“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”
-Sir Terry Pratchett​
“Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can."
-Sir Terry Pratchett
"You ride the currents you have, or you don't fly."
-Matt Dinniman
In general the soul makes greater progress when it least thinks so, yea, most frequently when it imagines that it is losing. Having never before experienced the present novelty which dazzles it, and disturbs its former habits, it considers itself as losing, rather than as gaining ground, when it sees itself lost in a place it once knew, and in which it delighted, travelling by a road it knows not, and in which it has no pleasure. As a traveler into strange countries goes by ways strange and untried, relying on information derived from others, and not upon any knowledge of his own—it is clear that they will never reach a new country but by new ways which they know not, and by abandoning those they knew—so in the same way the soul makes the greater progress when it travels in the dark, not knowing the way."
-Juan de la Cruz
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