Quotes About Acceptance

When he stood up, he felt in his pockets for money. There wasn't a bill. In a vest-pocket he found four nickels, that was all. He wasn't surprised—nothing about money could surprise him any more. Apparently he was supposed to go on losing it and losing it and losing it every time he got his hands on some. He looked around for his hat. "Where's my hat?

On the day the Arabs—and the Palestinians in particular—make a collective decision to accept the Jewish state, there will be peace, as Israel proved with its treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.

Simos said, "Grief work must be shared. In sharing, however, there must be no impatience, censure or boredom with the repetition, because repetition is necessary for catharsis and internalization and eventual unconscious acceptance of the reality of the loss. The bereaved are sensitive to the feelings of others and will not only refrain from revealing feelings to those they consider unequal to the burden of sharing the grief but may even try to comfort the helpers." (97)

Our shame seems to come from what we do with the negative messages, negative affirmations, beliefs and rules that we hear as we grow up. We hear these from our parents, parent figures and other people in authority, such as teachers and clergy. These messages basically tell us that we are somehow not all right, not okay. That our feelings, our needs, our True Self, our Child Within is not acceptable.

Submitting to others, rather than affirming our own reality, is the heart of active co-dependence—we give up our own inner world in order to be accepted by others.

One alternative that nearly always relieves our suffering is surrender: we surrender our false self, and our attachment to the notion that we can control anything.

The final need is unconditional love. This is a difficult concept for many to understand. I discuss this need further in Chapter 15.

When we allow ourselves to feel these painful feelings, give them an accurate name, and when we share the grief with safe and supportive others over time, we are able to complete our grief work and thus be free of it.

This lack of awareness of a major source of the family chaos results in extensive, destructive and unnecessary acceptance, as well as self blame and guilt among family members.

Our Real Self is spontaneous, expansive, loving, giving, and communicating. Our True Self accepts ourselves and others. It feels, whether the feelings may be joyful or painful. And it expresses those feelings. Our Real Self accepts our feelings without judgment and fear, and allows them to exist as a valid way of assessing and appreciating life's events.

When we think or act this way, we do so at either one extreme or the other. For example, either we love someone completely or we hate them. There is no middle ground. We see the people around us as either good or bad, and not the composite they really are. We judge ourselves equally as harshly. The more we use all-or-none thinking, the more it opens us up to behaving in an all-or-none fashion. Both of these actions tend to get us into trouble and to cause us to suffer unnecessarily.

We don't have to do anything to be our True Self. It just is. If we simply let it be, it will express itself with no particular effort on our part. Indeed, any effort is usually in denying our awareness and expression of it.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.

I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz , that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.

I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time.

Just thinking about a friend makes you want to do a happy dance, because a friend is someone who loves you in spite of your faults.

I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.

I gave up trying to understand people long ago. Now I let them try to understand me!