Boundary Setting Quotes

When we begin to set boundaries with people we love, a really hard thing happens: they hurt. They may feel a hole where you used to plug up their aloneness, their disorganization, or their financial irresponsibility. Whatever it is, they will feel a loss. If you love them, this will be difficult for you to watch. But, when you are dealing with someone who is hurting, remember that your boundaries are both necessary for you and helpful for them. If you have been enabling them to be irresponsible, your limit setting may nudge them toward responsibility.

Focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no.

[On appeasement:] If you let a bully come into your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed.

Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.

You best teach others about healthy boundaries by enforcing yours.

I'm not in the business of warning people.

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.

Being made to feel like an irrelevant child was probably an asset. Benign negligence is not a bad parental attitude or at least a cross between a benevolent dictator and benign negligence - you should just let kids crack on with it.

No one ever went broke by saying no too often.

Every woman has a mother, and every woman will have an issue with that mother and things that mother did or didn't do. It just depends on how you choose to process the lessons that you learned from your own mother.

Learn to say no; it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

I want to make it a little inconvenient for everybody to get to me.

I don't like to talk about my personal life, so I will not talk about others. I don't give advice. I give advice to only my mother, father, and brother on health.

Why do I have to be an example for your kid? You be an example for your own kid.

Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don't matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends.

I don't read work emails after 7 P.M. or on weekends.

I am nice, yeah. I'm cool. But I'm no push-over. And if someone gets one over on me, they've done it when my eyes were closed, and it doesn't happen twice.

Don't spend time with anyone you don't like.

My dad was not good at saying no. I'm trying to be better at saying no.

I never allow myself to be pressured.

People seem to think of me as a goody-goody who never curses, but I can be very nasty if I'm pushed. Cross me too many times, and I'll never talk to you again.

I respect my boundaries, and I insist that others respect them, too.

I teach people how to treat me by what I will allow.

I can't be everything to everyone. Send me your specs.

My strategy has always been to give people just enough of me, then pull back. That way, they'll want more.