Hugh Prather Quotes

How ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavor to flee from another's which is not.

To "know thyself" must mean to know the malignancy of one's own instincts and to know, as well, one's power to deflect it.

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

Anger, and the self-righteousness that is both the cause and consequence of anger, tends to be easier on the psyche than personal responsibility.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

I am a really sensitive person.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

I'm trying to figure myself out through my movies. Whether it's big stuff like what we're doing here, or little stuff like, 'Why aren't I happier?' With every film I feel like I'm apologising for something. I feel I'm most successful when I'm looking for something that embarrasses me about my character that I'd like to expose.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

You need to distinguish between getting something off your chest that won't help anyone else or saying something because you know you will be hell to live with if you don't. Quite often, this will be beyond your control.

I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me.

We can't determine our emotions, but we can choose our attitudes and actions.

In every person, you have a world of personalities and souls, a world of perspectives that you can share. You can get into anyone's shoes. You've got to be willing to stare at the ugliest part of yourself and deal with it.

I feel like I'm always talking about myself, and I love not talking about myself.

I find it hard to act other than the way I feel.

You can't escape from yourself, can you?

I am a very sensitive person.

If I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.

Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don't. I know that's enigmatic, but that's sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.

So many of us, myself included, need to keep our sense of personal outrage in check. Each human beings position on the planet is one of intense humility.