Quotes About Balance

We see them in the narrow, immediate, overwhelming now, instead of surrounded by the yesterdays and tomorrows that may be a more important part of them than whatever is currently and obviously manifest. And we have to see in this way, or be overwhelmed.

To walk that border is to stay on the path of life, the divine Way.

Un acontecimiento significativo existe en la frontera entre el orden y el caos.

La seguridad de la sociedad predecible proporciona un antídoto al miedo, pero una sociedad demasiado rígida garantiza que tarde o temprano se producirá su propia destrucción.

Perhaps what you want is blinding you to what else could be. Perhaps you are holding on to your desires, in the present, so tightly that you cannot see anything else—even what you truly need.

How much leisure, enjoyment, and reward do you require, so that you feel like more than a beast of burden?

É a interação viva entre instituições sociais e realização criativa que mantém o mundo equilibrado sobre a linha estreita entre demasiada ordem e demasiado caos. É um imbróglio terrível; um autêntico fardo existencial.

You could watch the precious days tick by. Or you could learn how to entice yourself into sustainable, productive activity. Do you ask yourself what you want? Do you negotiate fairly with yourself? Or are you a tyrant, with yourself as slave?

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

No tree can grow to Heaven," adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, "unless its roots reach down to Hell."134 Such a statement should give everyone who encounters it pause. There was no possibility for movement upward, in that great psychiatrist's deeply considered opinion, without a corresponding move down. It is for this reason that enlightenment is so rare.

Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?

That is the moral of both narratives: follow the rules until you are capable of being a shining exemplar of what they represent, but break them when those very rules now constitute the most dire impediment to the embodiment of their central virtues.

Psychological forces are never unidimensional in their value, however, and the truly appalling potential of anger and aggression to produce cruelty and mayhem is balanced by the ability of those primordial forces to push back against oppression,

no se trata en absoluto de la voluntad de creer en cosas que sabes perfectamente que son falsas. Eso sería ignorancia o ceguera voluntaria. Se trata, por el contrario, de darse cuenta de que las irracionalidades trágicas de la vida tienen que compensarse con un compromiso igualmente irracional con la bondad esencial del Ser.

Living things are always to be found in places they can master, surrounded by things and situations that make them vulnerable.

He who has many material things, may be described as rich, but he who knows he has enough, and is at one with the Tao,

When do we simply follow convention, doing what others request or demand; and when do we rely on our own individual judgment, with all its limitations and biases, and reject the requirements of the collective? In other words: How do we establish a balance between reasonable conservatism and revitalizing creativity?

El orden, cuando se lleva demasiado lejos, cae en el desequilibrio y puede también manifestarse de una forma destructiva y terrible.

That's where we are simultaneously stable enough, exploring enough, transforming enough, repairing enough, and cooperating enough.

He observed that the virtues always aim for balance and avoid the extremes of the vices.

So rules there will be—but, please, not too many. We are ambivalent about rules, even when we know they are good for us. If we are spirited souls, if we have character, rules seem restrictive, an affront to our sense of agency and our pride in working out our own lives. Why should we be judged according to another's rule?

Rules should not be multiplied beyond necessity. (…) Limit the rules. Then, figure out what to do when one of them gets broken.

PERFECT ORDER BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE

Everything does not have to be given away for free. But even a little unnecessary mystery goes a long way.