Quotes About Boundaries

You know, there's this little rule about opinions. They're only good when someone actually asks you for them.

If you never let anyone get near you, they soon got the message you wanted to be left alone.

The thing about nagging is that it's not nagging if you ask a person once. It only becomes nagging when you're asking for the fortieth time.

Because if you are fragmented and uncertain it is terrifying to find the boundaries of yourself melt. Survival in a desert, then, requires that you lose this fragmentation, and fast. It is not a mystical experience, or rather, it is dangerous to attach these sorts of words to it.

Consensual nonconsent is not uncommon in sexual relationships: pretending to resist and protest while prior consent has been given. Plenty of normal, loving couples play this way.

Imaginary prisoners are still prisoners.

Just so long as you're cool with outercourse, I guess I don't mind." I grinned. "What the heck is outercourse?

after a parent-teacher conference that his firefighter and DEA agent brothers-in-law lowered the hammer: No devices were allowed whenever they sat down to eat as a family. And that included when they dined out. They placed time limits on their computers in addition to the already installed parental controls, and they had to leave their cell phones on their parents' dresser before retiring for bed.

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

beyond its own borders without encroaching on the autonomy of another.

Consolémonos por ignorar las relaciones que pueden existir entre una araña y un anillo de Saturno, y sigamos examinando lo que está a nuestro alcance. Voltaire.

most sect movements have remained small and obscure. Placing high demands on members and maintaining distinctive boundaries with the surrounding culture are not sufficient to explaining the vitality of religious organizations. Yet these are often necessary conditions for vital rcligions.11

Never offer him or her friendship. You will be used.

Paying attention to her bodily cues would have forced the girl to admit both her fear and her reluctance to let her mother touch her. This pattern of denial, if not stopped, will continue past childhood. As an adult, she may lack the physical boundaries that would protect her from abuse. She will allow herself to be close to people who are not safe. Saddest of all, she won't even trust her senses to know when abuse is occurring.

When children focus on their parents and neglect themselves, they never develop the inner resources that help them to know how to feel, think, or behave in a given situation. This is the essence of codependency and a damaged boundary system.

Intellectual boundaries are blurred by parents who too tightly control their children's perceptions. Often, children who become dependent on their parents to think for them don't develop intellectual boundaries. This kind of relationship encourages dependency and discourages responsibility.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

If, when he first begins tentatively to say "No," his parents beat him down rather than love and encourage him, he thereafter will say "No" not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion.

The fear of being alone derives much of its terror from our anxiety lest we lose our awareness of ourselves. If people contemplate being alone for longish periods of time, without anyone to talk to or any radio to eject noise into the air, they generally are afraid that they would be at "loose ends," would lose the boundaries for themselves, would have nothing to bump up against, nothing by which to orient themselves.

Trop, c'est personne.

Never had we ever kissed as lovers; if we touched lips it was as brother and sister. In one moment of emotion, our lips fell together by accident, but we quickly removed ourselves as though we were children touching glass with dirty hands.

I don't like to touch, and I don't like to be touched.