Anyone who knows me knows I like to throw out quotes from my favorite authors and people. Of course, I usually mess the quote up completely and create my own spin to it. I do this often in therapy sessions as well. Sometimes I have even required my clients to bring back quotes from some people who inspire them. It is a good way to help my clients focus on the virtues they appreciate most from the people they admire most and making them their own. We can then internalize the values and set out a path to live these values which would help them effectively handle the current issues they may be dealing with. They make for great discussion and sometimes one quote can be enough to spark enough conversation to last the whole session. Following are some of my favorite therapy/counseling quotes...with no spin!
“Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things. We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best when we are being greedy" C.S. Lewis
"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” C.S. Lewis
“We do not want merely to see beauty ... We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” C.S. Lewis
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” Nelson Henderson
"You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right." Rosa Parks
"As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be there to hold the person down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might." Marian Anderson
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life. T.S. Eliot
"Don’t give in to the moment's experience by sweeping the truths and values you already hold under the rug." Detrich Von Hildrebrand
"One is not simple when his world is shrunken with no depth and with no meaning. It lacks content and abundance. Therefore their inner life reflects that of the world and is only simple for being cheap. Devoid of meaning. He is hardly interested in a domestic animal as a living being, in the deep mystery embodied in a living organism. No concern for mystery...The truly simple man while being presented with a vast diversity in things and situation always remains constant and always governed by one unchanging central attitude.” Detrich Von Hilibrand
“To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.” Aristotle
"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." Aristotle
“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” Henry Van Dyke
"The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” St. Therese of Lisieux
"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." Anne Frank
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." G.K. Chesterton
“Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness – or so good as drink.” G.K. Chesterton
"Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.” G.K. Chesterton
"Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses." G.K. Chesterton
"I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples." Mother Teresa
“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”
St. Therese of Lisieux
"Spiritual goods do not diminish when shared or given away, and do not deprive another when I acquire them. The more money I get, the less you have and the more I give away, the less you have. But love, truth, friendship and wisdom increase rather than decrease when shared." Peter Kreeft
"No one has ever become poor by giving." Anne Frank
“A free commitment of the will is possible only on the basis of truth. The experience of freedom goes hand in hand with the experience of truth” Karol Wojtyla
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." Victor Frankl
"If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart." Socrates
“Tragedy is the highest expression of the infinite value of human life.” G.K. Chesterton
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." MLK Jr.
You're more than welcome to add some of your own!
