Quotes About Boundaries

Women can't have it all if that means doing it all.

The truth is always the best approach when saying no. Keep it simple. People don't need to hear your sob story. A five-minute exposition about your busy life, your demanding mother, or your clinging children isn't the most effective approach. That may be the truth, but you've given too much information, and your listener tuned out four minutes ago.

I'm learning that I don't have to prove myself. And despite my superwoman complex, which got me into all kinds of situations, I'm not able to do all things.

Not every task, volunteer position, responsibility at work, or job around the house is my responsibility.

Stop explaining yourself. It's a waste of energy. The urge to defend yourself comes from your soul saying: This is a toxic relation. Leave.

This is the map we wish to construct in our heads: a reliable guide that allows us to avoid those who are not worthy of our time and trust and to embrace those who are. The best indications that our always-tentative maps are faulty include feelings of sadness, anger, betrayal, surprise, and disorientation.

I found out very early that the more you want to hold people the more they want to be free.

Tudo o que me ocorria era que, por mais intimidade que tenhamos com alguém, há limites, barreiras entre nós que não podemos mesmo ultrapassar, coisas que nos tocam tão fundo que não podem ser partilhadas com mais ninguém. Talvez seja o que não podemos partilhar com os outros o que verdadeiramente nos define.

All I could think was that no matter how close we are to someone else, there are limits, frontiers between us that we just can't cross, things that touch us so deeply they can't be shared with anyone else. Maybe, I thought, it's what we can't share with others that really defines who we are.

Don't let house or garden climb on your back and stick there. And unclutter your mind from any idea that you have to do a thousand things before other people do them.

I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.

Crossing over the boundaries we've been taught to live within is a tough business. But I'm getting the idea they're not so formidable.

If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve.

Friends are lost by calling often, and by calling seldom.

...and only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out just how far one can go.

Stretching oneself too thin is the disease of modern life — letting oneself get too thick, the other.

My neighbor asked me if he could borrow my lawnmower. I told him he could — as long as he didn't take it out of my yard.

PLEASE DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT KNOCKING. PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK.

Life is difficult enough without undue association with people.

After witnessing a young Indian man throwing a popped grain of some sort at a caged, humiliated mountain lion) That was it. I grabbed his throat and sank my thumb and middle finger into the joint behind his Adam's apple. I did not want to kill him, though, not even hurt him. I just wanted to terrify him so badly that he would never, ever, ever, ever again even presume to think of throwing something at that lion.

Working to fulfill someone else's needs or dreams almost always catches up with you.

It's not wise to trust a poet with one's secrets, but it's not wise to cross them, either

you don't build endurance by pushing yourself beyond your limits.

Metaphysics is a closed system;