It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.
Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.
The antidote for fear of failure is not success but small doses of failure.
Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.
I don't think pain is a prerequisite for growth, but on the other hand, most of us choose very painful ways to learn.
A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they've got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success
Let's get this started, people. It won't be long before we all lose our minds.
Madness passed me by, she smiled hi. I nodded.
Beat me, hate me, you can never break me.
Character is inured habit.
If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.
Become strong again in spirit, strong in will, strong in endurance, strong to bear all sacrifices
Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.
To succeed in the game of power, you have to master your emotions. But even if you succeed in gaining such self-control, you can never control the temperamental dispositions of those around you. And this presents a great danger.
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?
If we don't teach kids how to be alone, they will end up only lonely.
Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.
For me, survival is the ability to cope with difficulties, with circumstances, and to overcome them.
I'm not really sure what the psychology is, but for me, I'm interested in it because it's such a juxtaposition to what is going on in my life with a newborn, as you can see. So because of that juxtaposition I'm really fascinated by it, but I'm equally terrified by it, and I think that diving in it makes me feel safer as a woman and a mother for some reason.
Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.
Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize there are more flavors of pain than coffee. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. And everything that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one way or another.
But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirits strong even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.
