Quotes About Responsibility

But sometimes — more often than we tend to realize — those difficult people are us. That's right — sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

When people delude themselves into believing they have all the time in the world, she's noticed, they get lazy.

Is this something that's being done to me or am I doing it to myself?

Your misery doesn't change their situation. You can't lessen their misery by carrying it for them inside you. It doesn't work that way. There are ways for you to be a better mother to them at this point in all of your lives. Sentencing yourself to live in prison isn't one of them.

I know how affirming it feels to blame the outside world for my frustrations, to deny ownership of whatever role I might have in the existential play called My Incredibly Important Life.

One of the most important steps in therapy is helping people take responsibility for their current predicaments,

That's right - sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our own difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

Just because she sends you guilt doen't mean you have to accept delivery.

One of the most important steps in therapy is helping other people take responsibility for their current predicaments, because once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they're free to generate change.

Freedom involves responsibility, and there's a part of most of us that finds responsibility frightening.

At some point, being a fulfilled adult means taking responsibility for the course of your own life and accepting the fact that now you're in charge of your choices.

People communicate through their attendance—whether they're prompt or late, cancel an hour beforehand, or don't show up at all.

She wasn't willing to look at what she was doing that made it difficult for people to give her what she wanted.

It isn't that I haven't been able to write at all. In fact, during the time I was supposed to be writing my book, I was crafting fabulously witty and flirtatious emails to Boyfriend, all while telling friends and family and even Boyfriend that I was busy writing my book. I was like the closet gambler who gets dressed for work and kisses his family goodbye each morning and then drives to the casino instead of the office.

Ruby is my sister. And strangely, undeniably, my child.

I felt the weight of my father's failures and the absence of my mother and I wondered who would teach me, or if a guy could learn on his own, what it means to be a man.

You don't know if you ruined your kids or if they were born that way.

Further, for Rich, love was work and free choice, not a result of fate or destiny.

When we worry we say to God, 'I can't trust You. You're not doing Your job, so I'm going to step in and take over.' We can't just call that arrogance and foolishness—it's sin.

biggest troublemaker you'll ever meet stares you in the face when you brush your teeth. —Dutch Callahan

Don't blame the stream. Blame the dumbass who climbed into a laundry cart when it was parked at the top of a hill.

When you make a mistake, don't make a second one -- keeping it to yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten eggs is at the nest. The deeper you hide them in the case the longer they stay in circulation, and the worse impression they make when they finally come to the breakfast table.

Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a shortcut to the second.

Never threaten, because a threat is a promise to pay that it isn't always convenient to meet, but if you don't make it good it hurts your credit. Save a threat till you're ready to act, and then you won't need it.