M. Scott Peck - The Road Less Traveled (1978)

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Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.

M. Scott Peck
Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a profound tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.

M. Scott Peck
When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.

M. Scott Peck
Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

M. Scott Peck
The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness.

M. Scott Peck
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because when we truly see this truth we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult, once we truly understand and accept it, then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

M. Scott Peck
When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

M. Scott Peck
When you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself in all ways that are necessary.

M. Scott Peck
The feeling of being valuable - 'I am a valuable person'- is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline.

M. Scott Peck
Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.

M. Scott Peck
Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.

M. Scott Peck
When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it....

M. Scott Peck
How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

M. Scott Peck
When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.

M. Scott Peck
The only real security in life lies in relishing life's insecurity.

M. Scott Peck
Wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

M. Scott Peck
Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.

M. Scott Peck
When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.

M. Scott Peck
Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present.

M. Scott Peck
In thinking about miracles, I believe that our frame of reference has been too dramatic. We have been looking for the burning bush, the parting of the sea, the bellowing voice from heaven. Instead we should be looking at the ordinary day-to-day events in our lives for evidence of the miraculous, maintaining at the same time a scientific orientation.

M. Scott Peck
As I grow through love, so grows my joy, ever more present, ever more constant.

M. Scott Peck
The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.

M. Scott Peck
The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cures. The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace-a gift of god, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair.

M. Scott Peck
If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.

M. Scott Peck
All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up—that growing is an ever ongoing process.

M. Scott Peck
Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it revels their badness. They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of self-awareness.

M. Scott Peck
We cannot solve a problem by saying, "It's not my problem." We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say, "This is my problem and it's up to me to solve it."

M. Scott Peck
Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.

M. Scott Peck
The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

M. Scott Peck
Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.

M. Scott Peck