R. Peck Quotes

Overacting is a self-indulgence, while underacting comes either through a lack of talent or a lack of courage.

You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

God wants us to become himself or herself or itself. We are growing toward Godhood. God is the goal of evolution.

Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and wisdom.

Sorry, honey, but I haven't worn a nightgown in years.

The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.

There we were, hundreds of us lined up, waving at the great man as he tipped his hat to us. And that is the extent of my acquaintance with Albert Einstein.

Going into the unknown is invariably frightening, but we learn what is significantly new only through adventures.

Climbing is unadulterated hard labor. The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow.

I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

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

The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.

Commitment is inherent in any genuinely loving relationship.

Everything that happens in life is there to aid our spiritual growth.

When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

Self examination is the key to insight, which is the key to wisdom

Nothing to mountaineering, just a little physical endurance, a good deal of brains, lots of practice, and plenty of warm clothing.

When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it.

I don't think I could stay interested for a couple of months in a character of mean motivation.

The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another person we give him or her our attention; we attend to that person's growth.

Real artists take the misery and sadness of life and translate it into art.

A discussion becomes destructive when it begins to generate more heat than light.

I'm just a geeky, goofy person.

When I read a good book, it's like traveling the world without ever leaving my chair.

A plot is two dogs and one bone.

As Benjamin Franklin said, 'Those things that hurt, instruct.' It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.

We cannot be a source for strength unless we nurture our own strength.

As I grow through love, so grows my joy, ever more present, ever more constant.

Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother.

One extends one's limits only by exceeding them.

...they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself.

The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.

It is our task-our essential, central, crucial task-to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures.

With total discipline we can solve all problems.

If we seek to be loved - if we expect to be loved - this cannot be accomplished; we will be dependent and grasping not genuinely loving.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

Love always requires courage and involves risk.

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.

I believe it would be considerably healthier for us to dare to live without a reason for many things than with reasons that are simplistic.

Face your reality. You, black or white, are not innocent anymore. Either you have the courage to face it or you will go down together with the whole idea of the American Dream.

Most people who are HIV positive are on drugs and that gets their viral load so low that it's harder to transmit it. Most new infections come from people who don't know they're infected.