What does a life of total dedication to truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination. We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner.

M. Scott Peck

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

M. Scott Peck

encouragement truth spiritual

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

M. Scott Peck

spiritual happiness inspirational

Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

M. Scott Peck

self spiritual love-is

Since [narcissists] deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world's fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others.

M. Scott Peck

evil hands thinking

Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. Emotional health is facing reality at any cost.

M. Scott Peck

emotional motivational reality

It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.

M. Scott Peck

adversity cutting pain

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

M. Scott Peck

motivational inspirational funny

Since true listening involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the others. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable, and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the dance of love is begun again.

M. Scott Peck

listening-to-others acceptance love-is

The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.

M. Scott Peck

wall communication purpose

Community [is] a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to "rejoice together, mourn together," and to "delight in each other, make others' conditions our own.

M. Scott Peck

community together commitment

Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.

M. Scott Peck

prejudice want profound

By far the most important form of attention we can give our loved ones is listening... True listening is love in action.

M. Scott Peck

important listening giving

Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs

M. Scott Peck

dedication cost reality

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear.

M. Scott Peck

courage fear inspiring

We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

M. Scott Peck

change motivational life

Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness.

M. Scott Peck

journey self answers

The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.

M. Scott Peck

change spiritual attitude

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture

M. Scott Peck

evil-people church christian

Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.

M. Scott Peck

best-love sweet-love cute-love

Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. ... They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of self-awareness. ... [E]vil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme.

M. Scott Peck

pain hate truth