Thomas Keating Quotes

I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.

It's very common to think that we're always evolving, that we've changed so much from our younger selves, that within decades we've transformed into these different people. We like to think that. I feel in some ways that I am still so much my younger self. There are ways that I'm different: I feel like I'm wiser and kinder. But I think a lot of the impulses are still the same. I learned that.

I think of myself as still being about five. Maybe that's why my Twitter picture is of me at five. That's how I feel. I'm honored if I can inspire somebody else. I'm just still trying to figure it all out about myself.

When you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me." That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world.

Leave the poor Some time for self-improvement. Let them not Be forced to grind the bones out of their arms For bread, but have some space to think and feel Like moral and immortal creatures.

I don't think a person should take herself seriously unless she is alone.

I think over time you learn to know a bit more about yourself - you develop a certain amount of self-insight and self-awareness, and you know what you can absorb, and what you cannot; what gets to you and what doesn't.

Men and women alike, if you think that altering the tip of your nose with surgery will make you happier, I would suggest you alter something much more malleable than your flesh, like your priorities, or your friends.

Did I express my personality? I think that's quite unimportant because it's not people's selves but what they have to say about life that's important.

The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.

I don't want women to hold themselves back. I think there are too many women who are self-conscious about the way they look - the way they see themselves in the mirror.

Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people.

There's a lot of me in it. But the character is more egotistical. I'm also egotistical, but not the way the character is. This guy is successful, he has everything, but his wife has left him. The most important value - love - is missing. What is wrong with this institution called 'marriage'? What is wrong with this institution called 'the pursuit of happiness'?

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover.

I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.

I like to think of myself less like 'an adult' and more like a 'former fetus.'

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

A self is, by its very essence, a being with a past. One must look lengthwise backwards in the stream of time in order to see theself, or its shadow, now moving with the stream, now eddying in the currents from bank to bank of its channel, and now strenuously straining onwards in the pursuit of its chosen good.

As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.

I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn't think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.

I should figure out why I'm so much more interested in doing something that I think is really hard. But, somehow, the thing that is hard for me feels more noble.

Once you see a child's selfimage begin to improve, you will see significant gains in achievement areas, but even more important, you will see a child who is beginning to enjoy life more.

I think that my looks through the years have served me well because I was never a great beauty and I was never cast as a great beauty. My looks were not part of my transportation - certainly not in the typical leading lady role - so I never leaned on it and I never really made that a high value.

I think of myself as a human being.