Our families can be the living room with the fireplace that is cozy and welcoming and warm while the storms of winter rage outside.
But a villain who despairs of his villainy has not become a hero. A hero is something positive, not just the absence of evil.
You can't say no to the call to adventure. Life without adventure is deadly dull - and writing for a living is not without its adventures.
A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has it under voluntary control.
Order is not enough. You can't just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can't long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity
Don't avoid the truth to protect your feelings. The truth might hurt, but it is the key to finding inner peace.
In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement
It's like, 'You have something to say? You better say it, because you're going to dwindle and disappear if you don't.'
You can say, 'Well, isn't it sad that 9/10 of our history is the history of oppression and cruelty?' It's like, 'Yeah, it is sad. But what's even sadder is that it's not 99/100.'
You should take care of, you should help, you should assist, you should support the people who are helping themselves.
There's some real utility in gratitude. It's also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment.
The poor and stressed die early; this is one of the most dismal facts I know. That's partly why I'm a psychologist. It's the primary reason why I wrote '12 Rules for Life'.
If you don't take responsibility for your life, the tendency is that other entities will try to control it.
The truth is something that burns, it burns off dead wood, and people don't like having their dead wood burnt off, often because they're 95% dead wood.
