Fritz Perls Quotes

We live in a society running from pain through alcohol, through too much exercise, through sugar, through drugs - as opposed to realizing that these things come up because they are lessons. It's a way to wake you up.

If you let pride stop you, you will hate life

For a person to build a rich and rewarding life for himself, there are certain qualities and bits of knowledge that he needs to acquire. But there are also things — harmful attitudes, superstitions, emotions — that he needs to chip away. A person needs to chip away everything that doesn't look like the person he or she most wants to become.

I was a self-centered bore. I was masochistic, and only thought I was happy. When I woke up and said, "there must be something wrong with me", I grew up. Because I never understood myself, how could I hope to understand anyone else? That's why I can truly say that now I can give a woman love for the first time in my life, because I can understand her.

Pain is one of life's great lessons. You need to know how you'll react to the negatives in your life. Only then will you learn from the pain, and the next time it happens, you can speed up your healing process.

Tennis was always sort of a - a learning. It was a vehicle for me to discover a lot about myself. And the things that I sort of discovered at times I not only didn't want to see it for myself but I certainly didn't want millions of people to see it.

I've grown so much, not just as an actor, but as a human being.

For sure, some things have changed with the way I feel about things, like my mindset and everything. But you always learn every year about your mindset and what works for you.

"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."

Experience is how life catches up with us and teaches us to love and forgive each other.

There is no telling what a human character is. Until the test comes. To most of us the test comes early in life. A man is confronted quite soon with the necessity to stand on his own feet, to face dangers and difficulties and to take his own line of dealing with them. It may be the straight way, it may be the crooked way --- whichever it is, a man usually learns early just what he is made of.

It's really about connecting to your own humanity and your own behaviors, and getting to a level of self-awareness so that you can have perspective and step outside of yourself and transform and become another person.

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

That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego. Resolution is saying, "I cannot live spontaneously. ".

I don't trust anyone who hasn't been self-destructiv e in some way, and who hasn't gone through some sort of bout of self-loathing. You've got to bang yourself around a bit to know yourself.

An excuse is the tool our weak self uses to prevent our strongest self from reaching greatness.

I'm happier in the way a guy gets happier when he starts to mature. It doesn't make things easier, but I'm so much better at handling them.

For me, it's a voyage of self-discovery. I'm able to go on a set and to explore situations, personalities, people and characters that are close to me, or maybe not. Through going there and experiencing these different people and their situations, it helps me to get oriented and develop as a human being. So, acting is fundamental to who I am.

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.

Early on in my career, I was more closed off in every way. I thought I was protecting myself; instead, I was robbing myself of all I could learn and experience.

Many leadership problems are driven by low self-awareness.

Embrace each challenge in your life as an opportunity for self-transformation.

You learn to love by loving.