Responsibility & Maturity
Come from Emotional Responsibility (ER)
- List of related quotations appears in Secret of Maturity, 4th Ed. in both ebook and print editions.
- Read for the best understanding and method for gaining maturity.
Quotations from Various Sources: Direct Reference
Listed Alphabetically
“A baby expects to be soothed, but a mature adult soothes themselves.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.” —Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Adults are experts at self-disturbance and inept at self-soothing.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” —Gautama Buddha
“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” —Epictetus
“Because you upset yourself, therefore you, luckily, can practically always un-upset the one person in the world whose thoughts and feelings you control you!” —Albert Ellis
“But do not of your own accord make your troubles heavier to bear and burden yourself with complaining.” —Seneca
“But if anything in thy own disposition gives thee pain, who hinders thee from correcting thy opinion?” —Marcus Aurelius
“But I, unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured. And it is in my power not to think so.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Don’t regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours.” —Epictetus, Enchiridion
“Emotional responsibility is the high price you pay in order to own your self.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“Every man’s chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people’s opinions.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.” —Epictetus, The Art of Living
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” —Aristotle
“How does a person who cannot tame his desires differ from the most ignorant beast?” —Xenophon, Memorabilia
“How does it help…to make troubles heavier by bemoaning them?” —Seneca
“How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them?” —Marcus Aurelius
“I am happy and content because I think I am.” —Alain-Rene Lesage
“I realized that they had already taken everything from me except my mind and my heart. Those they could not take without my permission. I decided not to give them away. And neither should you.” —Nelson Mandela
“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet, you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?” —Epictetus
“If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior.” —Robin Skynner, noted psychiatrist
“If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it.” —Marcus Aurelius
“If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.” —Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it: and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180), Roman philosopher and emperor
“If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally—about anything. Yes, anything.” —Albert Ellis
“It is impossible for you to be harmed by purely verbal or gestural attacks unless you specifically let yourself—or actually make yourself—be harmed.” —Albert Ellis
“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” —Agnes Repplier
“It is not men’s acts which disturb us, for those acts have their foundation in men’s ruling principles, but is our own opinions which disturb us.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” —Epictetus
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” —Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher
“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” —Abraham Lincoln
“Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” —Anonymous
“Put from you the belief that ‘I have been wronged,’ and with it will go the feeling. Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears.” —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, Book IV
“REBT consequently specializes in showing people what their own basic theories about themselves and the world are and how these hypotheses often lead to destructive feelings and actions, how they can be forcefully falsified and replaced with more workable philosophies.” —Albert Ellis
“Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. When then a man irritates you, you must know that it is your opinion which has irritated you.” —Epictetus, Enchiridion
“Remember that it never was, in the first place, an original traumatic experience that made people disturbed but their attitude toward this experience at what I call point ‘B.’” —Albert Ellis
“Resolve to dismiss thy judgment about an act as if it were something grievous and thy anger is gone.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” —Horace, Roman poet
“Self-command is the greatest command of all.” —Seneca
“Sensations lead to feelings, lead to intentions, lead to thoughts, lead to actions.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to choose, unless that is your choice. Lameness is a hindrance to the leg, but not to your ability to choose. Say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens, then you will see such obstacles as hindrances to something else, but not to yourself.” —Epictetus, Enchiridion
“So the first and most essential element in our life’s happiness is what we are—our personality, if for no other reason than that it is a constant factor coming into play under all circumstances:” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Some days you have to create your own sunshine.” —Sam Sundquist
“Some people create their own storms, then get upset when it rains.” —Unknown
“Some pursue happiness, others create it.” —Anonymous
“Stimuli prompt feelings prompt thoughts prompt responses prompt feelings.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Teaching the principle of emotional responsibility can be one of the hardest tasks in REBT as clients may have habitually blamed others for their problems and now the therapist is pointing to the true source of their emotional problems–themselves.” —Michael Neenan and Windy Dryden, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: Advances in Theory and Practice, p. 43
“Tell me one thing about the past. I’ll prove it’s not what upset you. It’s how you philosophized about it that made you disturbed.” —Albert Ellis
“That which is evil to thee and harmful has its foundation only in the mind.” —Marcus Aurelius
“The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed—such a probabilistic, uncertain world.” ―Albert Ellis
“The emotionally sound person should be able to take risks, to ask himself what he really would like to do in life, and then to try to do this, even though he has to risk defeat or failure.” —Albert Ellis
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature.” —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“The happiness we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” —Scott Hamilton
“The origin of sorrow is this: to wish for something that does not come to pass.” —Epictetus, Discourses
“The proper work of the mind is the exercise of choice, refusal, yearning, repulsion, preparation, purpose, and assent. What then can pollute and clog the mind’s proper functioning? Nothing but its own corrupt decisions.” —Epictetus, Discourses, 4.11.6-7
“The stronger the susceptibility to unpleasant impressions, the weaker is the susceptibility to pleasant ones.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.” —Max Lerner
“The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.” —Benjamin Franklin
“There is no man so low that the cure for his condition does not lie strictly within himself.” —Thomas L. Masson
“There is no misery unless there be something in the universe which he thinks miserable.” —Seneca
“There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.” —David D. Burns
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” —Epictetus
“Therefore, in the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met, that is, upon the kind and degree of our general susceptibility.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within.” —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, Book IV
“Thou are injuring thyself, my child.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Today I have got out of all trouble, or rather I have cast out all trouble, for it was not outside, but within and in my opinions.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.” ―Albert Ellis, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
“True appreciation of his own value will make a man really indifferent to insult.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” —Marcus Aurelius
“We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” —Seneca
“We can complain of nothing but ourselves.” —Seneca
“We create the depression and anger we feel by demanding that the universe not be as rotten as it is. The reality is that the whole universe is not rotten nor is all of life rotten. Only certain elements of it are. Accept that along with many good things, bad things exist, change them if you can, and accept what you can’t change. Remember it’s your thoughts that create the way you feel. It’s practically never hopeless. Acceptance is the key.” —Albert Ellis
“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” —Carlos Castenada
“We teach people that they upset themselves. We can’t change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.” —Albert Ellis
“What a man has in himself is, then, the chief element in his happiness.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“When people disturb themselves, they view ‘bad’ things as ‘awful’ or ‘terrible’ and think that they absolutely must not occur.” —Albert Ellis
“When your important Goals are blocked by Adversities, you can largely choose to have either healthy or unhealthy feelings and you can also choose to act either helpfully or self-defeatingly.” —Albert Ellis
“Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.” —Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.” ―Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“You can only be a ‘victim’ of yourself. It’s all how you discipline your mind.” —Epictetus
“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” —Brian Tracy
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you find strength.” ―Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“You largely constructed your depression. It wasn’t given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.” —Albert Ellis
“You mainly choose to upset yourself by creating absolutistic musts and demands by taking your healthy preferences for success, approval, and pleasure, and turning them into unhealthy insistences and commands.” —Albert Ellis
“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.” —Warren Buffett
“You’d better strongly think, believe, and yes! feel that you can control your own emotional destiny. Not others’ thoughts and actions. No. Not the fate of the world. No. But your thoughts, feelings and actions.” —Albert Ellis
“You’re only a victim to the degree of what your perception allows.” ―Shannon L. Alder
“Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.” —Arnold Bennett
- Read for the best understanding and method for gaining maturity.
Quotations from Various Sources: Related Reference
Listed Alphabetically
“A man must himself have but a poor opinion of his own worth who hastens to prevent the utterance of an unfavorable opinion by giving his enemy a black eye.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Almost the first thing we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Always remember this Anna, there are no walls, no bolts, no locks that anyone can put on your mind.” —Otto Frank
“And if ever we have had an opportunity of seeing how the greatest of men will meet with nothing but slight from half-a-dozen blockheads, we shall understand that to lay great value upon what other people say is to pay them too much honor.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“As the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one’s fellowmen—is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go?” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“By a peculiar weakness of human nature, people generally think too much about the opinion which others form of them; although the slightest reflection will show that this opinion, whatever it may be, is not in itself essential to happiness.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Each man the architect of his own fate.” —Sallust
“For who is he that shall hinder thee from being good and simple?” —Marcus Aurelius
“Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.” —Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
“Good morning is not a greeting, it’s a decision.” —Anonymous
“He who conquers himself is mighty.” —Buddhist saying
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” —William Ernest Henley, Invictus
“I realized that they had already taken everything from me except my mind and my heart. Those they could not take without my permission. I decided not to give them away. And neither should you.” —Nelson Mandela
“If my body is enslaved, still my mind is free.” —Sophocles
“If people stopped looking on their emotions as ethereal, almost inhuman processes, and realistically viewed them as being largely composed of perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, and internalized sentences, they would find it quite possible to work calmly and concertedly at changing them.” —Albert Ellis
“If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.” —Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality.” —Seneca
“Injuries done to us by others often cause us less pain than those that we do to ourselves.” —La Rochefoucauld
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” —Epictetus
“It is better to conquer yourself than to conquer a thousand others. Victory over others is a hollow gain, while victory over oneself is something not even the gods can take or reverse.” —Dhammapada: The Thousands, verses 103–105
“It is much harder to live a life of freedom and self-rule than to be ruled by others.” —Mordechai Kaplan
“It is only you who can master your self. But once this is done, it is a rare blessing.” —Dhammapada: Self, verse 160
“It is the current philosophic and behavioral re-traumatizing that keeps the early disturbance alive in the present.” —Albert Ellis
“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.” —Seneca
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” —Marcus Aurelius
“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will–his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.” —Albert Schweitzer
“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.” —Seneca
“No matter what conditions exist in my life yes, even poverty or fatal illness I can still find some enjoyable pursuits if I think I can and if I try to find them! So I can stand, can tolerate, almost anything that I really don’t like.” —Albert Ellis
“No one is free, who is not master of himself.” —Pythagoras
“Nor, again, can the will be right without a right attitude of mind; for this is the source of will.” —Seneca
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, Book IV
“People are mainly victims of themselves because self-conditioning overrides all external conditioning no matter its amount, beginnings, degree, frequency, pressure, source, or systemic basis.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“Practice then from the start to say to every harsh impression, ‘You are an impression, and not at all the thing you appear to be.’ Then examine it and test it by these rules you have, and firstly, and chiefly, by this: whether the impression has to do with the things that are up to us, or those that are not; and if it has to do with the things that are not up to us, be ready to reply, ‘It is nothing to me.’” —Epictetus
“Self-command is the greatest command of all.” —Seneca
“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect and self-respect is the chief element in courage.” —Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
“The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the man.” —Roy Smith
“The answer lies within ourselves. If we can’t find peace and happiness there, it’s not going to come from the outside.” —Tenzin Palmo
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” —Albert Ellis
“The cause of all sins in every case lies in the person’s excessive love of self.” —Plato, Laws
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.” —Epictetus
“The condition and characteristic of a vulgar person is that he never expects either benefit or hurt from himself, but from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is that he expects all hurt and benefit from himself.” —Lucretius
“The first and the best victory is to conquer self.” —Plato
“The gods have released you from accountability for your parents, your siblings, your body, your possessions—for death and for life itself. They made you responsible only for what is in your power—the proper use of impressions. So why take on the burden of matters which you cannot answer for? You are only making unnecessary problems for yourself.” —Epictetus
“The mind becomes clarified by cultivating attitudes of friendliness, compassion, gladness, and indifference, respectively towards happiness, misery, virtue, and vice.” —Patanjali, Yoga Sutras
“There’s a victory and defeat–the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats–which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.” —Plato, Protagoras
“They reverse the natural order—regarding the opinions of others as real existence and their own consciousness as something shadowy.” —Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life
“Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” —Marcus Aurelius
“Thou must blame nobody.” —Marcus Aurelius
“To rule yourself is the ultimate power.” —Seneca
“To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories.” —Plato
“We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.” —La Rochefoucauld
“We can complain of nothing but ourselves.” —Seneca
“Well, then, is it not better to use what is in their power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power?” —Marcus Aurelius
“What else are tragedies but the ordeals of people who have come to value externals, tricked out in tragic verse?” —Epictetus
“When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.” —Epictetus
“Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.” —Thomas à Kempis
“Who is a hero? He who conquers his will.” —Pirkei Avot, 4:1
“Who is strong? One who overpowers his inclinations.” —Ben Zoma, Ethics of the Fathers, 4:1
“Who ranks as the highest? One who does not harm anything. One who never retaliates. One who is always at peace regardless of the other person’s disposition.” —Dhammapada: The Highest, verses 405–406
“Why is it that people are willing to take responsibility for their happiness or mild sadness but not their severe disturbance or great unhappiness?–why ego of course!” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
“You cannot escape responsibility by avoiding it today.” —Abraham Lincoln
“You have to do the work, no one can do it for you.” —Dhammapada: The Right Way, verse 276
“You will learn that men have chosen their own troubles.” —Pythagoras
“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.” —Marcus Aurelius
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