Words 📖

The author has often observed that in the genesis of great events, men generally possess no inkling of what their actions portend. This problem is not, as one might suppose, a result of men's blindness to the consequences of their actions. Rather it is a result of the mad way the dreadful turns on the trivial when the ends of one man cross the ends of another.

You hoard your pain because the more you suffer, the more the world becomes an outrage. You weep because weeping has become evidence, 'See what you've done to me!' you cry. And you hold court night after night, condemning the circumstances that have condemned you by reliving your anguish. You torment yourself, Leweth, in order to hold the world accountable for your torment.

If we're nothing more than our thoughts and passions, and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us.

"No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of words spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another soul to carry our own."

In order to change, people need to become viscerally familiar with realities that directly contradict the static feelings of the frozen or panicked self of trauma, replacing them with sensations rooted in safety, mastery, delight, and connection.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people "acknowledge, experience, and bear" the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak. "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves," he'd say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.

Our increasing use of drugs to treat these conditions doesn't address the real issues: What are these patients trying to cope with? What are their internal or external resources? How do they calm themselves down? Do they have caring relationships with their bodies, and what do they do to cultivate a physical sense of power, vitality, and relaxation? Do they have dynamic interactions with other people? Who really knows them, loves them, and cares about them? Whom can they count on when they're scared, when their babies are ill, or when they are sick themselves? Are they members of a community, and do they play vital roles in the lives of the people around them? What specific skills do they need to focus, pay attention, and make choices? Do they have a sense of purpose? What are they good at? How can we help them feel in charge of their lives?

Trauma, whether it is the result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships. After you have experienced something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself or anyone else again? Or, conversely, how can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated?

What is truly human is passion, in which indeed the one generation perfectly understands the other and understands itself. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love.

In what relation does madness stand to genius? Can one construct the one from the other? In what sense and to what degree is the genius ruler of his madness?

Aesthetics required concealment and rewarded it; ethics required disclosure and punished concealment.

Sorrow can put a person out of his senses: this is something one sees, and it is quite sad. That there is a strength of will that beats so far up into the wind that it rescues the understanding, even if a person does become a bit strange: this is also something one sees, and I have no intention of disparaging it. But to lose one's reason and, with it, the whole of finitude for which it is the broker—and then, by virtue of the absurd, to gain that same finitude: this terrifies my soul, but I do not on that account say that it is something paltry, for, on the contrary, it is the only marvel.

He would have plunged the knife into his own breast. He would have been admired in the world and his name would not be forgotten, but it is one thing to be admired, something else to be a guiding star who saves those who are in distress.

Everyone shall be remembered, but each was great in proportion to the greatness of that with which he struggled. For the one who struggled with the world became great by conquering the world, and the one who struggled with himself became great by conquering himself, but the one who struggled with God was greater than all.

Faith begins precisely at the point where thinking leaves off.