Eckhart Tolle Quotes

The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically "war stories."

life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.

Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?

When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.

There are always two forces warring against each other within us.

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.

You can't betray yourself too often, or you become somebody else.

A man's conflicts represent what he 'really' is.

You don't see many bad guys fight amongst themselves. Bad guys always know exactly who they are and what they want. Good guys are the ones who are a little confused about their identities.

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.

A true Christian is one who has not only peace of conscience, but war within. He may be known by his warfare as well as by his peace.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

I like conflict, drama's conflict and if you don't have that in the character it's really not a worthwhile role to play for me.

Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with oneself.

I am inside someone who hates me. I look out from his eyes.

We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.

When I turn the thought around - the thought that war, let's say war in Iraq, should stop - the turnaround is the war in myself should stop.

Whenever you are able, have a "look" inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment - where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing - and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what is? When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.

[Neurotics are] torn by inner conflicts ... Every neurotic ... is at war with himself.

All the characters on the album are inside me, though none are me. They are sides of me or who I was.

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.