Quotes

Karen Horney (2013). “Our Inner Conflicts: A CONSTRUCTIVE THEORY OF NEUROSIS”, p.27, Routledge

To experience conflicts knowingly, though it may be distressing, can be an invaluable asset. The more we face our own conflicts and seek out our own solutions, the more inner freedom and strength we will gain. Only when we are willing to bear the brunt can we approximate the ideal of being the captain of our ship. Spurious tranquillity rooted in inner dullness is anything but enviable. It is bound to make us weak and an easy prey to any kind of influence.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

a normal human being ... does not exist.

The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women's self-respect.

If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride

There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have found the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

I would be the least among men with dreams and the desire to fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires.

There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience.

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.