Hugh Prather Quotes

Our job this day is to become part of the answer to the world's immense and protracted suffering rather than continuing our ancient task of being part of the difficulty.

An argument is always about what has been made more important than the relationship.

'Fault' means failure to meet a standard. Whose? Mine.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.

If a man takes off his sunglasses I can hear him better.

When someone disagrees with me, I do not have to immediately start revising what I just said. People don't want me to always agree with them. They can sense this is phony. They can sense I am trying to control them: I am agreeing with them to make them like me. They feel; "I don't want to exist to like you. I DON'T exist to like you."

Whenever we condemn, we cloak the world in pain.

Next time I will ..." "From now on I will ..." - What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

All my life, I have made it complicated, but it is so simple. I love when I love. And when I love, I am myself.

It's not that "today is the first day of the rest of my life," but that now is all there is of my life.

Problems assault us to the degree they preoccupy us. The key to release, rest, and inner freedom is not the elimination of all external difficulties. It is letting go of our pattern of reactions to those difficulties.

You're wrong means that I don't understand you, I'm not seeing what you're seeing- and I'm not seeing all of you there is to see. But there is nothing wrong with you. You are what you need to be, doing what you need to be doing, and although I may take steps to protect myself of others, I do not know all and therefore am literally inadequate to judge.

There is nothing more painful than walking around with bitterness in your heart.

The components of happiness are quite simple. Happiness is gentleness, peace, concentration, simplicity, forgiveness, humor, fearlessness, trust, and now. In its true form each quality includes all the rest, for happiness is whole, and one feels whole when genuinely happy.

Boredom is useful to me when I notice it and think: Oh I'm bored; there must be something else I want to be doing... boredom acts as an initiator of originality by pushing me into new activities or new thoughts.

One element of maturity is the realization that we don't get away with anything. Any advantage gained or convenience taken, any private procrastination or insincerity, no matter how subtle or quick in passing, is paid for.

When we persist in looking for and finding what there is to value within our self, we discover a pure and loving being.

I live now and only now, and I will do what I want to do this moment and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.

There are only three things you need to let go of judging, controlling, and being right. Release these three and you will have the whole mind and twinkly heart of a child.

Because the results are unpredictable, no effort of mine is doomed to failure.

If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen.

Some people will like me and some won't. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I'll know that the people who like me, like me.

I don't need a "reason" to be happy. I don't have to consult the future to know how happy I feel now.

Happiness is gentleness, peace, concentration, simplicity, forgiveness, humor, fearlessness, trust, and now.

Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side.

Support your friends - even in their mistakes. But be clear, however, that it is the friend and not the mistake you are supporting.

We become what we look at most.

Don't fight a fact, deal with it.

There is no place love is not.

Within me is the potential to commit every evil act I see being committed by other men, and unless I feel this potential, I can at any moment be controlled by these same urges. I am free from these urges only if I recognize when I am feeling them, and while feeling them and acknowledging them to be me, choose not to follow them. Only in this way can I begin to regain the disowned parts of me. And only in this way can I know what it is I am criticizing in others.

Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency.

But it's morning. Within my hands is another day. Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day.

There were seventy-five people in the lobby and only a seven-year-old girl was finding out what it felt like to sit on the Marble Floor

Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don’t know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don’t know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life.

If your reaction to your partner's fear-or any other form of distress- is disdain or irritation, you do not want oneness or even friendship with your partner at that moment.

The ego, as a collection of our past experiences, is continually offering miserable lines of thought. It's as if there were a stream with little fish swimming by, and when we hook one of them there is a judgment. The ego is constantly judging everybody and everything. It has its constant little chit chat about things that can happen in the future, things about the past, too, and these are the little fish that swim by. And what we learn to do-this is why it takes work-is to not reach out and grab a fish.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.

The first step of letting go: To remove what obstructs your experience of wholeness and peace, you must first look at the obstruction.

It's not that we fear the place of darkness, but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.

Boredom or discontent is useful to me when I acknowledge it and see clearly my assumption that there's something else I would rather be doing. In this way boredom can act as an invitation to freedom by opening me to new options and thoughts. For example, if I can't change the activity, can I look at it more honestly?

By approaching my problems with "What might make things a little better?" rather than "What is the solution?" I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I am only going to chip away at it.

Books seek us out. They slip themselves into our hands just at the time we are ready for a new self-concept.

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues.