Charles H. Percy Quotes

When you research someone, you actually get beyond your own preconceptions and become aware of the human being other than the image. You become empathetic and sympathetic in turn.

Love them for who they are, and what they are they are; they are not you. Good stuff, isn't it? You have to live 73 years to get that.

The point of Jesus' existence wasn't to lessen or diminish our appreciation of each other, but to expand our appreciation of each other by reminding us what lies within all of us, because Jesus was an example of the pinnacle of human evolution.

O, would some Power give us, To see ourselves as others see us!

It's critical to be able to see things in other people that sometimes they don't see in themselves.

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.

I don't really care so much what people say about me because it usually is a reflection of who they are. For example, if people wish I would sound like I used to sound, then it says more about them than it does me.

When I look at a person, or a character, it is in every case the beginning of an endless journey. And I don't suppose I know where that starts. I know that I have to, like every other person, make decisions and have opinions. But I'm real careful to not judge crassly or cheaply someone else's life.

As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found out in a lot of small ways that that wasn't the case. It's sort of a mixed blessing. My mind is like a puppy. It goes all over. I guess writing fiction was a way of harnessing that. I could hook a puppy up to a treadmill and get something out of it.

Not perhaps until later life, until the follies, passions, and selfishness of youth have died out, do we . . . recognize the the inestimable blessing, the responsibility awful as sweet, of possessing or of being a friend.

Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.

Embrace reality. Think about what delights you - the small luxuries on which you depend, the people whom you cherish most. But remember that they have their own distinct character, which is quite a separate matter from how we happen to regard them.

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

I have come to think that one of the most satisfying experiences I know — and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person — is just fully to appreciate this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset.

Other people have qualities that may be better than your own. Let them express them.

Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.

In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.

It takes skill to be real. Time to heal each other

If You Don’t Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.

It is fine to imitate a being you respect, but you cannot become that very being. Imitation is something one does to grow and develop. It is not something you use to deceive yourself. You absorb in yourself the things you think have some kind of value, but even if you try to find the meaning about your true self you will not find anything. Because those who cannot accept their real self always fail.

A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.

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.

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.