Hugh Prather Quotes

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.

Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side.

Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield.

I am responsible for what I see. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. I could see peace instead of THIS. The past is over it can touch me not. This instant is the only time there is. Today I will judge nothing that occurs. I am not the victim of the world I see. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. I am determined to see things differently. I am never upset for the reason I think. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. All that I give I give to myself.

There are only three things you need to let go of judging, controlling, and being right. Release these three and you will have the whole mind and twinkly heart of a child.

Happiness is a present attitude and not a future condition.

An argument is always about what has been made more important than the relationship.

perfectionism is a slow death. if everything were to turn out just like i would want it to, just like i would plan for it to, then i would never experience anything new; my life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. when i make a mistake i experience something unexpected.... when i have listened to my mistakes i have grown.

It's this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.

It is enough that I am of value to somebody today.

A messy mortal is my friend. Come walk with me in the mud.

There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen.

You're wrong means that I don't understand you, I'm not seeing what you're seeing- and I'm not seeing all of you there is to see. But there is nothing wrong with you. You are what you need to be, doing what you need to be doing, and although I may take steps to protect myself of others, I do not know all and therefore am literally inadequate to judge.

I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.

True humor is fun - it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, and cut off. True humor has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together.

I can't be found in myself; I discover myself in others. That much is clear. And I suspect that I also love and care for myself in others.

Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behavior, trying new ways of 'being myself', so that I can see who it is I want to be.

It's not that we fear the place of darkness, but that we don't think we are worth the effort to find the place of light.

The fatal mistake is waiting for life's circumstances to be right before we begin. Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel. Practice knowing and you will know.

It is your right to be happy. This is what you were made for. And if you will not resist, happiness will find a way to pour from your heart and fill your days.

Stands must be taken. If I am to respect myself I have to search myself for what I believe is right and take a stand on what I find. Otherwise, I have not gathered together what I have been given; I have not embraced what I have learned; I lack my own conviction.

For communication to have meaning it must have a life. It must transcend "you and me" and become "us." If I truly communicate, I see in you a life that is not me and partake of it. And you see and partake of me. In a small way we then grow out of our old selves and become something new. To have this kind of sharing I cannot enter into a conversation clutching myself. I must enter into it with loose boundaries. I must give myself to the relationship, and be willing to be what grows out of it.

Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble.

A whole mind cannot create chaos. A conflicted mind can create nothing else.

Don't fight a fact, deal with it.

Support your friends - even in their mistakes. But be clear, however, that it is the friend and not the mistake you are supporting.

Life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats-with very few moments of clear peace.

If my attention is wandering, there is somewhere it wants to go, so obviously it does not want to be where I am holding it in the name of some self-styled obligation.

Problems assault us to the degree they preoccupy us. The key to release, rest, and inner freedom is not the elimination of all external difficulties. It is letting go of our pattern of reactions to those difficulties.

If a man takes off his sunglasses I can hear him better.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.

Next time I will ..." "From now on I will ..." - What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

Some people will like me and some won't. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I'll know that the people who like me, like me.

If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

We are all saying the same thing in different words.

If your reaction to your partner's fear-or any other form of distress- is disdain or irritation, you do not want oneness or even friendship with your partner at that moment.

The components of happiness are quite simple. Happiness is gentleness, peace, concentration, simplicity, forgiveness, humor, fearlessness, trust, and now. In its true form each quality includes all the rest, for happiness is whole, and one feels whole when genuinely happy.

But it's morning. Within my hands is another day. Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day.

Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.

Whenever I find myself arguing for something with great passion, I can be certain I'm not convinced.

There were seventy-five people in the lobby and only a seven-year-old girl was finding out what it felt like to sit on the Marble Floor

There is no place love is not.

I can not 'make my mark' for all time - those concepts are mutually exclusive. 'Lasting effect' is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately.' Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now.

By approaching my problems with "What might make things a little better?" rather than "What is the solution?" I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I am only going to chip away at it.

Moods should be heard but never danced to.

Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don’t know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don’t know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life.

If the ocean was pure mind and I was a wave, I would be in terror if Itried to distinguish myself fromthe water that produced me.What is a wave without water, and what is a mind without God?

Letting people in is largely a matter of not expending the energy to keep them out.

Peace, or freedom from conflict, is the absolute core of happiness. It is in learning to watch our sense of peace that we avoid unhappiness. All forms of misery are heralded by a frame of mind that must become immediately recognizable if we are ever to gain mastery in happiness...Take the time to look in your heart and be clear. Walk through life being clear. Practice doing each thing in peace.