I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Meditation helps me to calm down.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Fear is a spirit that produces a feeling.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you’ll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

When the people you love are gone, you’re alone.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

You might be tough, but you can only be so tough for so long, you know what I mean? The brain can only take so much damage. The body can only take so much damage.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.