Quotes About Balance

Every paradise demands a serpent.

No, no, I just meant…' Patrick felt he was coming from too many directions at once.

Balance was so elusive: either it was like this, too fast, or there was the heavy thing like wading through a swamp to get to the end of a sentence.

Is there ever anything to get unduly worried about,' Peter couldn't help asking, 'when there are so many things to worry about duly?

It was a profession that seemed to fuse compassion and brutality, without having to reveal which was the dominant impulse, as long as both were accompanied by a high degree of precision.

the two men left the building with a sense of achievement, counterbalanced by desire.

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.3 What do you see in your own heart?

Fear has given birth to extreme parenting. It looks like love, but it is love mingled with fear.

When you have to manage the world, please everyone, earn more than you did last year, and work off five pounds, you will be driven. If not, you run the risk of being un-American or even un-Christian because our economy and churches rely on such people. Even when paralyzed by circumstances, a stressed person is a driven person.

Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.3 What do you see in your own heart?

There's a Haitian saying, "Pitit moun se lave yon bò, kite yon bò." When you bathe other people's children, it says, you should wash one side and leave the other side dirty. I suppose this saying cautions those who care for other people's children not to give over their whole hearts, because they will never get a whole heart back.

God grant us the courage to change those things we can, the serenity to accept the things we can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.

the major relational problem for our species is not getting together; protoplasm loves to join. The problem is preserving self in a close relationship. No human on planet Earth does that well.

Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the "territory" is a family or an organization. And a leader's capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is—that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution's specific issues, makeup, or goals—is the key to the kingdom.

The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.

Kings and subjects, rich and poor, reciprocally depend upon each other; and it is the command of God that every one perform well the part which is assigned him.

While we seek to fill up life in a way that will best secure the ends of our existence here, our whole plan and course of action should be such as will not hinder but serve our preparation for a future world.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

What's interesting about books that take place in the future, even twenty years in the future, is that many of them are black or white: It's either a utopia or it's misery. The real truth is that there's going to be both things in any future, just like there is now.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.