We cannot be a source for strength unless we nurture our own strength.

Since true listening involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the others. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable, and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the dance of love is begun again.

Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.

The giving up of personality traits, well-established patterns of behavior, ideologies, and even whole life styles...these are major forms of giving up that are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life.

We are most often in the dark when we are the most certain, and the most enlightened when we are the most confused.

The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.