Quotes About Boundaries

Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren't on that person's agenda—even if he tells you they are.

The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking—people imagine that if they say no, they won't be loved by others. The inability to say yes, however—to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program—is more about lack of trust in oneself. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn't it safer to stay where I am?

a person could walk around in a prison of his or her own making and never be behind bars.

The boundaries between us had been breached for good, we gave a new meaning t the notion that man and wife were one flesh. You could track back this kind of alchemy in books: '...intimately to mix and melt and to be melted together with his beloved, so that one should be made out of two.' This is Shelley translating Plato, who was putting words into the mouth of Aristophanes, who's the only defender of heterosexual sex in the Symposium, although he makes it sound perverse.

Wait here, Miz Meg, and we'll holler when we're undressed and under the covers. We know it don't bother you seein' our backsides since you're a widow and all, but it'd sure bother us… even though you've seen "em before. We kinda like to keep 'em to ourselves

It would imply an intimacy we do not share.

Don't tell people about your problems...90% of them don't care, and the other 10% are glad you got them?

The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.

Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.

This was the thing he never understood: yes, he would give me time to work when I demanded it, but my time was considered to belong to our family unit unless I signalled that I wanted out. His time was considered to belong to himself and his work unless I demanded that he opt in.

It's hard enough to make changes when we want to, but to try to make someone else change when he or she doesn't want to is impossible

You forgive that person and then you release them. Taking a stand and setting healthy boundaries is often the most loving thing you can do—not only for yourself, but for the other person as well.

Sometimes people with cancer or other terminal illnesses have such a hard time saying "no" to an authoritative figure in their life, that on an unconscious level they will create a major dis-ease to say "no" for them.

Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or the kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.' 'And some are let into the bedroom,' said Gamache.

Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.

A therapist has to have clear boundaries, even with former clients. People already get into our heads—if they also get into our lives, there's a problem.

The Chief believed if you sift through evil, at the very bottom you'll find good. He believed that evil has its limits. Beauvoir didn't. He believed that if you sift through good, you'll find evil. Without borders, without brakes, without limit.

Armand Gamache knew no good ever came from putting up walls. What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity. And few things thrived in captivity.

But when does the lifeboat become the prison ship? When does the drug start working against you? Had her beloved, gentle, wounded husband escaped too far?

Three short words, but potent. They more than anything had launched a thousand ships, a thousand attacks. One of us. A circle drawn. And closed. A boundary marked. Those inside and those not.

With his words, he crushed these people. Killed these people. They were never, ever the same. They now lived in a netherworld where the unthinkable happened. Where the boundaries would now forever be proscribed by "before" and "after.

Armand Gamache had no stomach to breach someone else's boundaries just because he could.

Be very, very careful who you let into your life. And learn to make peace with whatever happens.

This was a walled world. With a pretense of control, without the reality of it.