Self-affirmation cannot be found in love; it is a prior condition of genuine love.

In order to plan your future wisely, it is necessary that you understand and appreciate your past.

You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. Of all the people you will know in the lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave or lose.

You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self.

Every life is a dilemma that must be solved by the person living it.

There is no way of steering successfully between a failed situation and a failed self except by stopping and taking our bearings.

If life is envisioned as a continuously running motion picture, the keeping of a notebook stops the action and allows a meaningful scene to be explored frame by frame.

The divorced person is like a man with a black patch over one eye: he looks rather dashing but the fact is that he has been through a maiming experience.

Men fear being used; women fear being used up.

Most people ask of their friends that they understand them, but, on balance, I think I prefer a friend who understands himself.

We find what we expect to find. We do not see the world as it is but as we are.

There is no friend like a book there is no beauty like a kind heart.

At a crucial point in my early twenties, being able to end a pregnancy had restored to me what I regarded as a normal life. I remember that it saved me.

The more wealth a man has, the louder his children talk.

Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.

Steven Barnes is uniquely powerful in helping others balance their physica and emotional arenas along a path of unifying purpose.”

Man, be he who he may, experiences a last piece of good fortune and a last day. [Ger., Der Mensch erfahrt, er sei auch wer er mag, Ein letztes Gluck und einen letzten Tag.]

Listen, you only tease the ones you love.

I refuse to stand by while our democracy is trampled by politicians more concerned about amassing power than helping the people who sent them to Washington in the first place.

My subordinates followed my orders.

I was raised to believe in hard work, in faith and family. ... The most important job I'll ever have is spelled D-A-D.