Barbara Deming Quotes

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

He who has no pleasure in looking up, is not fit so much as to look down.

Never ask, "Who is my real friend?" Ask, "Am I a real friend to somebody?" That is the right question. Always be concerned with yourself.

It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather ask, What am I to do? What am I to learn from this experience? What am I to change? Whom am I to help? How can I remember my many blessings in times of trial? Wiling sacrifice of deeply held personal desires in favor of the will of God is very hard to do. Yet, when you pray with real conviction, "Please let me know Thy will" and "May Thy will be done," you are in the strongest position to receive the maximum help from your loving Father.

I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into.

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?

When forced, as it seems, by your environment to be utterly disquieted, return with all speed into your self, staying in discord no longer than you must. By constant recurrence to the harmony, you will gain more command over it.

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

The real preparation for education is the study of one's self.

It's wonderful to have the most important thing in the world there first thing in the morning. And especially in this business, where the opportunity to think everything is about you is there every day, now I really know that it isn't all about me.

The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.

"Why is everyone here so happy except me?" "Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere," said the Master. "Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere?" "Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside."

I don't want to take myself too seriously. That's my lesson to myself.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I'm the biggest sinner of them all.

We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.

We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.

No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself

But we are such deceivers that we will not look at ourselves in relationship, because there the real face can be seen. So we close our eyes to relationship, and we go on thinking that something is going to be seen inside. You cannot see anything inside.

I feel like I'm moving from a world where I was creating fantasies that weren't real inside - and very often feeling really dissatisfied - to now living in reality for the first time in my life since I was a kid, and learning to appreciate where I am now while actually sitting with that reality.

Laughter is a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside.

I got the best of Jesus. He got the worst of me.

I've sort of prided myself on playing characters with conscience. The first way I go about creating a character is looking at that area of conscience. What have they done, and what has it cost.

Before making peace, war is necessary, and that war must be made with our self. Our worst enemy is our self: our faults, our weaknesses, our limitations. And our mind is such a traitor! What does it? It covers our faults even from our own eyes, and points out to us the reason for all our difficulties: others! So it constantly deludes us, keeping us unaware of the real enemy, and pushes us towards those others to fight them, showing them to us as our enemies.