Quotes About Balance

Ante la locura, la contralocura.

Les hommes les plus sains d'esprits ne sont que des fous tranquilles.

Yeah. That's what happened. We sat around, nobody talked. I don't understand marriage, Charlie. What are you supposed to do with your wife? I mean, most of the time. CHARLIE (Thinking) Most of the time, Arnold, you don't even see each other. You're away working. You come home, and you eat. Then one of you washes the dishes. Then, if you're not tired, you can go to the movies or visit somebody. Or you watch Tee Vee.

I really like to sometimes go into food detox and eat very simply.

Maybe that old adage about not being able to have a good apartment, a good relationship, and a good job at the same time is true.

death holds up an all-seeing mirror, 'the mirror of past actions', to our eyes, in which the consequences of all our negative and positive actions are clearly seen and there is a weighing of our past actions in the light of their consequences, the balance of which will determine the kind of existence or mental state we are being driven to enter.

It's hard to be responsible, adult and sensible all the time. How good it is to have a sister whose heart is as young as your own.

Mother Nature (aka the natural world before humans imposed fear on her) provides for every single need.

Could a person mourn and be joyful simultaneously? I understood it as the challenge of the twenty-first century. Maybe it was simply what being a grown up meant.

but for the rest of my own life, I want to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief without

had been born knowing that if you held the proper measuring stick, animals would always test smarter than people, and nothing I've seen in my lifetime has disabused me of that notion. We may have more complicated language, opposable thumbs and this dangerous thing called reason, but any self-respecting llama or buffalo or spider knows enough not to destroy its own home.

You got some synchronicity happening in your life right now?

Where's the give and take there? That's not a marriage. That's a male version of heaven.

You don't want to have to be the man and the woman in the relationship. I always say you want a man who can fix the toilet.

I don't do the gym and I don't diet. I'm vegetarian but I don't diet.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to be your morning lollipop, but I need to eat, too.

Jack liked it when things balanced themselves like that, the chaos and asymmetries of life coming together in surprising ways to achieve order.

Yet the French have managed to be involved without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there's no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents." one Parisian mother tells me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time.

Like the French, he starts babies off on vegetables and fruits rather than bland cereals. He's not obsessed with allergies. He talks about "rhythm" and teaching kids to handle frustration. He values calm. And he gives real weight to the parents' own quality of life, not just to the child's welfare.

Give willingly, refuse unwillingly," he writes in Émile. "But let your refusal be irrevocable. Let no entreaties move you; let your 'no,' once uttered, be a wall of brass, against which the child may exhaust his strength some five or six times, but in the end he will try no more to overthrow it. Thus you will make him patient, equable, calm and resigned, even when he does not get all he wants.

French parents don't just think these separations are good for parents. They also genuinely believe that they're important for kids, who must understand that their parents have their own pleasures. "Thus the child understands that he is not the center of the world, and this is essential for his development

Part of me just wants to force-feed these women some spoonfuls of fatty pâté. But another part of me is dying to know their secrets. Having kids who sleep well, wait and don't whine surely helps them stay so calm. But there's got to be more to it. Are they secretly struggling with anything? Where's their belly fat? If this is all a façade, what's behind it? Are French mothers really perfect? And if so, are they happy?

The child must not invade the parents' whole universe . . . for family balance, the parents also need personal space,

What really fortifies Frenchwomen against guilt is their conviction that it's unhealthy for mothers and children to spend all their time together. They believe there's a risk of smothering kids with attention and anxiety, or of developing the dreaded relation fusionnelle, where a mother's and a child's needs are too intertwined. Children—even babies and toddlers—get to cultivate their inner lives without a mother's constant interference.