Melody Beattie Quotes

I know I lost my temper, but I tried to be human along the way.

I don't think I'm yet peaceful because I have to struggle every day within myself when I see the suffering of the people of the world, the women and the children. And fury sets in. But I have to transform that and take it out and do something positive with it - but I have to do that sometimes minute to minute.

I'm sensitive to how people are feeling if they feel like they got it wrong, and sensitive to the people who are kind of gloating that they knew all along, they figured it out. I'm loving them through this process, because I know that it took me a while once I found out that it was me.

It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters.

I don't know if there's a lot of patience anymore. I think that could serve a lot of people.

Each of us needs to eliminate our anger, fear and greed. The roots of social conflicts and political tensions are in personal anger, fear and greed.

A lot of people say that my life is wasted on me because I could be a bigger asshole than I am, but I've chosen not to be.

I certainly know I have been blessed with much more empathy than I ever knew I would feel for other people.

In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.

Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate.

It's the coolest thing - showing young, bright, and creative people that compassion and a compassionate life is the richest way to live. When you live that life, you create progress, productivity, and innovation.

I think empathy is a guy who punches you in the face at a bus station, and you're somehow able to look at that him and know enough about what situation he was in to know that he had to do that and not to hit back. That's empathy, and nothing ever happens in writing that has that kind of moral heroism about it.

We can teach a good, formal lesson on forgiveness as a Christian virtue and all the doctrines that are attached to it. But to be in a real-life situation, a work camp or a trip or some other activity with young people where real forgiveness needs to happen, that's a different situation altogether. And that is where the deepest learning will occur.

When we're hurting, it does not give us a license to hurt others.

When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself. For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion.

Living without hate for people is almost impossible. There is nothing wrong with fantasizing about revenge. You can have that feeling. You just shouldn't act in it.

I think closing-off is the most detrimental thing we can do as people. Also, the idea of not judging oneself.

[The biggest lesson I've got is] Learning to have patience with people, just take it one step at a time in everything that you're doing and just invest time in the people that you're with ... have patience with them, even if they're not necessarily the easiest person to work with.

Let not your rage or malice destroy a life.

The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people.

As a girl my temper often got out of bounds. But one day when I became angry at a friend over some trivial matter, my mother said to me, Elizabeth, anyone who angers you conquers you.

Explore your web: the needs, the beliefs, and the emotions that are controlling you so there's more of you to give and so you can appreciate what's driving other people. It's the only way our world's going to change.

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy.

I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.